Quotes from John Boyne

He knew that sometimes people who were sad didn't want to be asked about it; sometimes they'd offer the information themselves and sometimes they wouldn't stop talking about it for months on end, but on this occasion Bruno thought that he should wait before saying anything.

I think perhaps the adults we become are formed in childhood and there's no way around it.

Don't you ever think,' he asked cautiously, 'that it would be better to be a bully than to be bullied? At least that way no one could ever hurt you.' Katarina turned to him in amazement. 'No,' she said definitively, shaking her head. 'No Pieter, I never think that, not for a moment.

It's enough to make me laugh. I close the door behind me and sit down again, considering this, and truly, I find it so funny that I laugh until I cry. And when the tears come I think aah... So this is what it means to be alone.

Collars, trench coats or jackboots – uniforms allow us to exercise our cruelty without ever feeling guilt.

Pavel is not a doctor any more, Bruno' said Maria quietly. 'But he was. In another life. Before he came here

The history that one can create with a friend, a lifetime of history and shared experience, is a wonderful thing and shabbily sacrificed. And yet a true friend is a rare thing; sometimes those whom we perceive as friends are simply people with whom we spend a lot of time.

We're none of us normal. Not in this fucking country.

The last image I had of her was her sitting on the platform at Thorpe as a group of people stared at this distressed, weeping woman, and then her charging towards the glass of my window seat as the train pulled out of the station. I had gasped, thinking she meant to throw herself under the wheels, but no, she had simply wanted to attack me, that was all. If she had got her hands on me, she might have killed me. And I might have let her.

The more you read, the more you write, the more the ideas will appear. They'll fall like confetti around your head and your only difficulty will be deciding which ones to catch and which to let fall to the floor.

The notion that he had a life outside our life, outside our friendship, was deeply hurtful to me.

I don't drink coffee," she said, taking a sip from her tea. "Coffee is for Americans and Protestants. Irish people should drink tea. That's how we were brought up after all. Give me a nice cup of Lyons and I'm content." "I don't mind the occasional cup of Barry's myself." "No, that's from Cork.

He had never felt so ashamed in his life; he had never imagined that he could behave so cruelly. He wondered how a boy who thought he was a good person really could act in such a cowardly way towards a friend.

A home is not a building or a street or a city or something so artificial as bricks and mortar. A home is where one's family is...

Neither your mother nor I have any imagination at all and we certainly didn't bring you up to have one

Other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of a cupboard.

He pushed his two feet together and shot his right arm in the air before clicking his two heels together and saying in a deep and clear voice as possible the words he said every time he left a soldiers presence. 'Heil Hitler,' he said, which, he presumed, was another way of saying, 'Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon'.

A marriage should be about friendship and companionship, not about sex.

no man with any sense should marry the girl to whom he loses his virginity. It's like learning to drive in some clapped-out old banger and then holding on to it for the rest of your life when you've developed the skill to handle a BMW in rush-hour traffic on a busy Autobahn.

When I make mistakes I get punished,' insisted Bruno, irritated by the fact that the rules that always applied to children never seemed to apply to grown-ups at all (despite the fact that they were the ones ho enforced them).

From the introduction After all, the great joy of literature, as opposed to politics or religion, is that it embraces differing opinions, it encourages debate, it allows us to have heated conversations with our closes friends and dearest loved ones. And through it all, no one gets hurt, no one gets taken away from their homes, and no one gets killed.

When he closed his eyes, everything around him just felt empty and cold, as if he was in the loneliest place in the world. The middle of nowhere.

How can something still feel so painful after twenty-eight years, I asked myself. Is there no recovery from the traumas of our youth?

I think this was a bad idea,' he repeated. 'I think the best thing to do would be to forget all about this and just go back home. We can chalk it up to experience