Quotes from Jennifer Donnelly

Turn away. From the darkness, the madness, the pain. Open your eyes and look at the light.

Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.

What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed.

Cry your grief to God. Howl to the heavens. Tear your shirt. Your hair. Your flesh. Gouge out your eyes. Carve out your heart. And what will you get from Him? Only silence. Indifference. But merely stand looking at the playbills, sighing because your name is not on them, and the devil himself appears at your elbow full of sympathy and suggestions. And that's why I did it....Because God loves us, but the devil takes an interest.

Cripes Miss Wilcox, they're not guns,' I said. No, they're not Mattie, they're books. And a hundred times more dangerous.

Little by little, the old world crumbled, and not once did the king imagine that some of the pieces might fall on him.

We're not punished for our sins, lad. We're punished by them.

Sometimes, when you catch someone unaware at just the right time and in just the right light, you can catch sight of what they will be.

There were lives in those books, and deaths. Families and friends and lovers and enemies. Joy and despair, jealousy, envy, madness, and rage. All there. I reached out and touched the cover of one called The Earth . I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

She's got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure.

Because God loves us, but the devil takes an interest.

Life's all about the revolution, isn't it? The one inside, I mean. You can't change history. You can't change the world. All you can ever change is yourself.

I've always admired your rather formidable will, your refusal to back away from difficulties, but sometimes strength isn't about perseverance. Sometimes it's about knowing when to quit.

The rain comes down harder as I write. It sheets off the roof in torrents. I wish it would pound against me. Pound the life from my body. The flesh from my bones. The pain from my heart.

I played a role. That is what actors do. But I played it too well. I went too far. And by the time I wanted to stop, to take a bow and leave the stage, it was too late.

I struggled for a long time to get anything published.

Sometimes, when you catch someone unaware at just the right time and in just the right light, you can catch sight of what they will be.

She was everything he wanted from his life, the very measure of his dreams.

I just love historical fiction.

There is only one thing I fear now-love. For I have seen it and I have felt it and I know that it is love, not death, that undoes us.

DNA tells you all the secrets of life, ' he used to say. Except for one—how to live it.

For the first time, I saw what was in his heart, and I wondered if he might ever want to look deep enough to see mine.

Bravery is feeling fear but doing the thing anyway.