Quotes from John Boyne

Bruno: "Why do you wear pajamas all day?" Shmuel: "The soldiers. They took all our clothes away." Bruno: "My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away."

I am opposed to war, to killing people, to any kind of hatred and violence.

War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.

Do you see the irony at all, Tristan?' I stare at him and shake my head. He seems determined not to speak again until I do. 'What irony?' I ask eventually, the words tumbling out in a hurried heap. 'That I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one.

I've spent so much time pushing the boat out that I forgot to jump on and now it's out beyond the harbour on the high seas, but it's very nice to look at.

The people I see from my window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same.' 'Ah, those people,' said Father, nodding his head and smiling slightly. 'Those people...well, they're not people at all, Bruno.' Bruno frowned. 'They're not?' he asked, unsure what Father meant by that.

He looked the boy up and down as if he had never seen a child before and wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do with one: eat it, ignore it or kick it down the stairs.

Regrets and apologies are all very well, but there's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them. They're like brands.

You're my best friend, Shmuel,' he said. 'My best friend for life.

It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.

You were never a real Avery," he hissed. "You know that, don't you?" "I do," I said. "But Christ on a bike, you came close. You came damned close.

It is possible, you know, to drift off to an unknown world and find happiness there. Maybe even more happiness than you've ever known before.

And then the room went very dark and somehow, despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let it go.

life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face.

And I have tried to forget him, I have tried to convince myself that it was just one of those things, but it's difficult to do that when my body is standing here, eight feet deep in the earth of northern France, while my heart remains by a stream in a clearing in England where I left it weeks ago.

I can't bear to be on a train without a book, she announced. It's a form of self-defence in a way .

Just don't ever tell yourself that you didn't know.... That would be the worst crime of all.

Do you enjoy being a writer, Mrs Avery?" asked Julian. "No, of course not, she said. "It's a hideous profession. Entered into by narcissists who think their pathetic little imaginations will be of interest to people they've never met.

And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?

It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature.

He suddenly became convinced that if he didn't do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wondering round the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.

Those people... well, they're not people at all, Bruno

We don't have the luxury of thinking ... Some people make all the decisions for us

It's a big world, isn't it?' said Georgie. 'Do you think they hate each other on other planets too?