Quotes from Jennifer Donnelly

Belle hesitated. "What is this place?" she asked. "A bit of magic, like all good books," the man replied. "An escape. A place where you can leave cares and worries behind." He smiled. "At least for a chapter or two.

I think we all make mistakes. What matters is that we don't let our mistakes make us.

I try to remember that hard knocks leave dents.

Thousands of musical voices, like rain on water, beckoned.

I want to have hope, I can't help it, but I'm almost afraid to," Serafina

It was a trick. It was this place, all the memories. His longing heart and the darkness conspiring. But his eyes told him it was no trick. He jumped down off the steps and walked toward her. Hoping. Fearing. He'd done this before. So many times. Caught sight of a slender black-haired woman and impulsively called to her, only to have her turn and gaze at him with eyes that were questioning, coldly polite, and never, ever hers.

if these mortals only knew, if they had the merest understanding of the grave, and of the eternity they will spend lying in it, they would eat chocolate for breakfast, caviar for lunch, and sing arias as they slopped the pigs.

It's good that you still cry," Isabelle whispered to her. "It's when you stop crying that you're lost.

Sometimes you have to do wrong to do right.

Her fear was strong, but her need for the truth was stronger.

Yet I had such joy from the words.

Maybe his quietness masked a great and boiling soul.

And then I see them. In the glow of the flashlight, I see the corses. Stacks of them. Some are shriveled. Some are putrid. Most still have their clothes on. Not one has its head on. "No. No way. No way! This can't be. Fresh dead people? They said the bodies were two hundred years old. This is bad. Really bad. We've got to call someone. Frontline. Nightline. Anderson Cooper.

Isabelle thought her heart might burst.One by one, queens, pirates, empresses, and generals from all the corners of the world told their stories, bowed their heads, and left the stage. They were not pretty, these women. Pretty did not begin to describe them. They were shrewd. Powerful, Wily. Proud. Dangerous. They were strong. They were brave. They were beautiful.

Go round cringing like a dog, Matt," he said, "and folks will treat you like one. Stand up like a man, and they'll treat you like a man." That was fine for Weaver, but I wondered sometimes, How exactly do you stand up like a man when you're a girl?

Because I don't care anymore, Ms. Beezemeyer, I want to say. Not about Amade Malherbeau, my classes, college or much of anything. Because the gray world I've managed to live in for the past two years has started to turn black around the edges.

God didn't have to punish him; he'd created his own hell. By himself and for himself.

She wanted to scream her grief to the skies and wail like an animal, but she couldn't.

If you're going to bury the past, bury it deep, girl. Shallow Graves always give up their dead.

Ghosts are not the dead, come back from the grave to torment the living; ghosts are already here. They live inside us, keening in the ashes of our sorrows, mired in the thick, clutching mud of our regrets.

She smells of her cooking and the perfume Eau d'Hadrien. My mother wore it, too. She used to cook, like Lili. Our house smelled of garlic and thyme instead of sadness.

So, besides Ava being lost in a swamp full of homicidal maniacs, and Astrid swimming off to meet the king of homicidal maniacs, what other insurmountable problems are we facing tonight? - Sera

You are a ghost. Almost gone. Come back to us.

It was more than a book, more than a story. It was like nothing she'd ever known. And everything she'd ever wanted.