The Absolutist Quotes

“I think i'm just breathing, that's all. And there's a difference between breathing and being alive.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“Do you see the irony at all, Tristan?’
I stare at him and shake my head. He seems determined not to speak again until I do. ‘What irony?’ I ask eventually, the words tumbling out in a hurried heap. ‘That I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“And I have tried to forget him, I have tried to convince myself that it was just one of those things, but it’s difficult to do that when my body is standing here, eight feet deep in the earth of northern France, while my heart remains by a stream in a clearing in England where I left it weeks ago.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“ I can't bear to be on a train without a book", she announced. " It's a form of self-defence in a way" .”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“One single syllable of intimacy and the world is put to rights.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“And soon afterwards this manuscript will appear, my final book... There will be outrage and disgust and people will turn on me at the last, they will hate me, my reputation will for ever be destroyed, my punishment earned, self-inflicted like this gunshot wound, and the world will finally know that I was the greatest feather man of them all.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“We're accustomed to the older generation looking down on the younger and telling them that they know nothing of the world. But things are rather out of kilter now, aren't they? It is your generation who understands the inhumanity of man, not ours. It's boys like you who have to live with what you have seen and what you have done. You've become the generation of response. While your elders can only look in your direction and wonder.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“Astonishing how everyone is willing to go abroad to fight for the rights of foreigners while having such little concern for those of their own countrymen at home.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“The last image I had of her was her sitting on the platform at Thorpe as a group of people stared at this distressed, weeping woman, and then her charging towards the glass of my window seat as the train pulled out of the station. I had gasped, thinking she meant to throw herself under the wheels, but no, she had simply wanted to attack me, that was all. If she had got her hands on me, she might have killed me. And I might have let her.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“He reaches over, takes my face in his hands and pulls me to him. In my idle moments, imagining such a scene, I have always assumed that it would be the other way round, that I would reach for him and he would pull away, denouncing me as a degenerate and a false friend. But now I am neither shocked nor surprised by his initiative, nor do I feel any of the great urgency that I thought I would, should this moment ever come to pass. Instead, it feels perfectly natural, everything he does to me, everything that he allows to happen between us. And for the first time since that dreadful afternoon when my father beat me to within an inch of my life, I feel that I have come home.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“I think perhaps the adults we become are formed in childhood and there's no way around it.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“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

“I felt that this must be what it would be like to be married to someone, a constant back and forth of bickering, watching out for any stray comment in a conversation that might be corrected, anything to keep gaining the upper hand, the advantage, bringing one closer to taking the game, the set and the whole blasted match without ever ceding a point.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“There were others, such as Jack London,who offered their readers such a respite from the miserable horror of existence that their books were like gifts from the gods. (Character of Tristan Sadler in "the Absolutist")”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“You fought in the Great War?” a journalist from The Guardian asked me in a long interview to coincide with the presentation of the prize.
“I didn’t think it was all that great.” I pointed out. “In fact, if memory serves, it was bloody awful.”
“Yes, of course,” said the journalist, laughing uncomfortably. “Only you’ve never written about it, have you?”
“Haven’t I?”
“Not explicitly, at least.” He said, his face taking on an expression of panic, as if he had suddenly realized that he might have forgotten some major work along the way.
“I suppose it depends on one’s definition of explicit,” I replied. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve written about it any number of times. On the surface, occasionally. A little buried, at other times. But it’s been there, hasn’t it? Wouldn’t you agree? Or do I delude myself?”
“No, of course not. I only meant—“
“Unless I’ve failed utterly in my work, that is. Perhaps I haven’t made my intentions clear at all. Perhaps my entire writing career has been a busted flush.”
“No, Mr. Sadler, of course not. I think you misunderstood me. It’s clear that the Great War plays a significant part in your—“
At eighty-one, one has to find one’s fun where one can.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“I stood up and offered not a prayer, for that was of no use to anyone, but a moment of contemplation.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“In that direction only pain lies.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“Don't you have any principles, Tristan?" he asks me. "Principles for which you would lay down your life?"
"No", I say. "People perhaps, but not principles. What good are they?”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“Is it too much to ask for decent transportation during one’s lifetime?”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“it seemed like a great adventure, at least at the start.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“Tengo la sensación de que sólo me limito a respirar. Y existe una diferencia entre respirar y seguir viviendo.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“After all, the clamour of the crowded public house is infinitely more welcoming than the stillness of the empty home.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“Do you believe in heaven, Tristan?" he asks in a quiet voice, and I shake my head.
"No."
"Really?" he asks, surprised. "Why not?"
"Because it's a human invention," I tell him. "It astonishes me when people talk of heaven and hell and where they will end up when their lives are over. Nobody claims to understand why we are given life in the first place, that would be heresy, and yet so many purport to be completely sure about what will happen after they die. It's absurd”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“The adults we become are formed in childhood.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“that girl has no more sense than a postage stamp.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“I sat down again, wishing I had never been brought here. It was as if I had walked onstage into the middle of a dramatic play, where the other characters are already engaged in a battle that has been going on for some years but which only now, upon my arrival, is allowed to reach a climax.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“I find that many handsome young men are cads,”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“the usual nonsense that people who know nothing about anything, like me, say when they don’t want their own days to be ruined by worrying about others.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist

“My twin contradictory places of idleness: the public bar and the chapel. One so social and teeming with life, the other quiet and warning of death.”
― John Boyne, The Absolutist