John Boyne > Quotes

“Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you've found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that? ”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Their lost voices Must continue to be heard.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel's tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly.
"You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Bruno: Why do you wear pajamas all day?
Shmuel: The soldiers. They took all our clothes away.
Bruno: My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away. ”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Very slowly he turned his head back to look at Shmuel, who wasn't crying anymore, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body anymore, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away.'' -The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Heil Hitler," he said, which, he presumed, was another way of saying, "Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Well you've been brought here against your will, just like I have. If you ask me, we're all in the same boat. And it's leaking.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“The dot that became a speck that became a blob that became a figure that became a boy”
― John Boyne

“. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“He suddenly became convinced that if he didn’t do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wondering round the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“In his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“He looked the boy up and down as if he had never seen a child before and wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do with one: eat it, ignore it or kick it down the stairs.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Bruno opened his eyes in wonder at the things he saw. In his imagination he had tough that all the huts were full of happy families, some of whom sat outside on rocking chairs in the evening and told stories about how things were so much better when they were children and they'd had nowadays. He thought that all the boys and girls who lived there would be in different groups, playing tennis or football, skipping and drawing out squares for hopscotch on the ground.
As it turned out, all the things he thought might be there-wern't.'' -The boy in the striped Pajamas”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“The people I see from my window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same.' 'Ah, those people,' said Father, nodding his head and smiling slightly. 'Those people...well, they're not people at all, Bruno.' Bruno frowned. 'They're not?' he asked, unsure what Father meant by that.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. This was nothing like the kind of quiet he heard when he woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. When that happened, there were always strange, unidentifiable sounds seeping into his room from the tiny gaps where the windowpanes weren't sealed together correctly. At those moments he could always tell there was life outside, even if all that life was fast asleep. It was a silence that wasn't silence at all.”
― John Boyne, Noah Barleywater Runs Away

“He didn't want to play football. He wanted to be told the truth.”
― John Boyne

“But still there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“I like 'fresh fruit flan'," said the donkey. "Three excellent words."
"I don't have one," said Noah immediately before the question could even be asked, and the donkey opened his eyes wide in suprise, and for a moment Noah wondered whether he might even consider eating him.”
― John Boyne, Noah Barleywater Runs Away

“-Es muy bueno fingiendo ser alguien que no es -le comenté después a Zoya en el vestíbulo, cuando esperábamos para felicitarlo, sin saber muy bien si con esas palabras pretendía o no halagarlo-. No sé cómo lo hace.

- Yo sí -repuso ella, sorprendiéndome.”
― John Boyne, The House Of Special Purpose

“Hay veces en que le envidio su juventud, pero trato de no pensar mucho en eso. Un anciano no debe tener celos de aquellos que vienen a ocupar su puesto, y recordar el tiempo en que era joven, sano y viril es un acto de masoquismo que no sirve de nada.”
― John Boyne, The House Of Special Purpose

“Se me ocurre que, incluso aunque Zoya y yo aún seguimos vivos, mi vida ha concluido ya. No tardaré en perderla y no habrá razón para que continúe sin ella. Verán, es que somos una sola persona. Somos GeorgiZoya.”
― John Boyne, The House Of Special Purpose

“El punto se convirtió en una manchita, que se convirtió en un borrón, que se convirtió en una figura que se convirtió en un niño”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“Seated opposite me in the railway carriage, the elderly lady in the fox-fur shawl was recalling some of the murders that she had committed over the years.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist