Lois Lowry Quotes

50 Sourced Quotes

For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.

Lois Lowry
King Christian X, king of Denmark, used to ride through the streets of Denmark on his horse and wave to the people of Denmark. A German soldier said to a boy; "Where is his body guard?", and the boy said "All of Denmark is his bodyguard". This is reportedly true.

Lois Lowry
The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain or past.

Lois Lowry
He was free to enjoy the breathless glee that overwhelmed him: the speed, the clear cold air, the total silence, the feeling of balance and excitement and peace.

Lois Lowry
What's important is the preparation for adult life, and the training you'll receive in your Assignment.

Lois Lowry
Now he saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He saw all of the light and color and history it contained and carried in its slow - moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere from which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going

Lois Lowry
Mama was crying, and the rain made it seem as if the whole world was crying.

Lois Lowry
I knew that there had been times in the past-terrible times-when people had destroyed others in haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction

Lois Lowry
He hunched his shoulders and tried to make himself smaller in the seat. He wanted to disappear, to fade away, not to exist.

Lois Lowry
It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.

Lois Lowry
-a whole world can lie before someone, if love is there when one wakes.

Lois Lowry
Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.

Lois Lowry
Because of fear, they made shelter and found food and grew things. For the same reason, weapons were stored, waiting.

Lois Lowry
- My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it... - They know nothing.

Lois Lowry
There was just a moment when things weren't quite the same, weren't quite as they had always been through the long friendship

Lois Lowry
Always in the dream, it seemed as if there were a destination: a something—he could not grasp what-that lay beyond the place where the thickness of snow brought the sled to a stop. He was left, upon awakening, with the feeling that he wanted, even somehow needed, to reach the something that waited in the distance. The feeling that it was good. That it was welcoming. That it was significant. But he did not know how to get there.

Lois Lowry
And they are beginning to realize that the world they live in is a place where the right thing is often hard, sometimes dangerous, and frequently unpopular.

Lois Lowry
We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.

Lois Lowry
So actually, there could be parents-of-the-parents-of-the-parents-of-the parents?

Lois Lowry
Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.

Lois Lowry
But then everyone would be burdened and pained. They don't want that. And that's the real reason The Receiver is so vital to them, and so honored. They selected me--and you-to lift that burden from themselves.

Lois Lowry
But there's a whole world waiting, still, and there are good things in it.

Lois Lowry
Things seem more when you're little. They seem bigger, and distances seem farther.

Lois Lowry
I left home at the correct time but when I was riding along near the hatchery, the crew was separating some salmon, I guess I just got distraught, watching them.

Lois Lowry
It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.

Lois Lowry
There's much more. There's all that goes beyond – all... that is Elsewhere – and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those, when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future.

Lois Lowry
Sometimes I wish they'd ask for my wisdom more often - there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don't want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable - so painless. It's what they've chosen.

Lois Lowry
Now he saw another elephant emerge from the place where it had stood hidden in the trees. Very slowly it walked to the mutilated body and looked down. With its sinuous trunk it struck the huge corpse; then it reached up, broke some leafy branches with a snap, and draped them over the mass of torn thick flesh. Finally it tilted its massive head, raised its trunk, and roared into the empty landscape.

Lois Lowry
The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. "And they lived happily ever after,

Lois Lowry
She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist.

Lois Lowry