Quotes from Jennifer Donnelly

The guitar's still around me. I slip it off and put it down. I want to feel him. To feel his breath on my neck. The warmth of his skin. To feel something other than sadness. Hold me, I tell him silently. Hold me here. To this place. This life. Make me want you. Want this. Want something. Please

I love you, too... I won't ever leave you again. I promise. I kept that promise. For love him I did. For nearly two years I spent almost every waking hour with him. Until he was taken from me. But I never left him. And I never will.

Why do you write?' Because I love words and stories so much. Because I would be grief stricken every day of my life if I couldn't write. Because I'm obsessed and compelled. Because I'd be utterly useless at anything else.

He loves the sparkling fountains and their cascades and says the strangest things as he watches them. they look like stars breaking. Or, They look like Mama's diamonds. Or, They look like all the souls in heaven.

I want the key", he said. "The key to the universe. To life. To the future and the past. To love and hate. Truth. God. It's there. Inside of us. In the genome. The answer to every question. If I can find it. That's what I want," he finished, softly. "I want the key.

Because just for a few seconds, someone else hurts, too. For just a few seconds, I'm not alone.

Bravery is feeling fear but doing the thing anyway.

Dead man, you are dead wrong. The world goes on, stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can't you see? I do not.

I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

You terrify me, Isabelle. I've never met a girl like you. You're a fighter, fierce as hell. You never quit. You don't know how. You don't need anyone. You certainly don't need me.

I could solve all the Diophantine equations, extend Newton's work on infinite series, complete Euler's analysis of prime numbers, and it wouldn't matter." She looked at Isabelle. "Ella is the beauty. You and I are the ugly stepsisters. And so the world reduces us, all three of us, to our lowest common denominator.

Call a girl pretty once, and all she wants, forevermore, is to hear it again.

Mirrors only show us what we are. Books show us what we can be.

Life can be so difficult, and stories help us escape those difficulties. It's all right to lose yourself in one

The greenest of pastures are right here on earth.

Yeah. Sure. My brother's dead. My mother's insane. Hey, let's have a crepe.

My choice", he'd whispered, taking her hand. "Mine. Not theirs.

I look around myself wildly, my heart bursting with grief and fear and joy. I am leaving, but I will take this place and its stories with me wherever I go.

There is a ghost here. A lonely, heartbroken spirit. The ghost of everything that could've been and never was.

It's only the body that's gone. Only the body. There's a part that doesn't go in the ground, a part that stays inside you forever.

The truth costs. Lies cost more.

good warrior knows when to lose a battle so she can live to fight the war.

She never forgot the day she'd met him, or how his friends had told her to be more than pretty. She never forgot Elizabeth, Yennenga, Abhaya Rani. She wore his gold coin on a chain around her neck until the day she died. But the thing she treasured most was the memory of his smile, a smaile that was a wink and a dare. A wild road on a windy night. A kiss int he dark. A smile that had given her all she'd ever wanted-a chance. A chance to be herself.

What's done is done. Whether to you, or by you, and you cannot change it. But what's not done is not done. And there, both hope and hazard lie.