Lowry's Quotes

#1. It's a lovely adaptation that honors Lois Lowry's vision and authority ... the film ... illuminates and explores the beauty, danger and pain of our free, creative lives. Plenty to talk about in families and other communities. Go see it.

Mitali Perkins

#2. It's amazing when you come to think of it how the human spirit seems to blossom in the shadow of the abattoir!

Malcolm Lowry

#3. I'm fine. Really. The mere threat of mouth-to-mouth probably saved me from slipping into a coma."
"That's what I'm here for," Seth replied cheerfully.

Lisa Roecker

#4. Well ... ," Jonas had to stop and think it through. "If everything's the same, then there are no choices! I want to wake up in the morning and DECIDE things! A blue tunic, or a red one?

Lois Lowry

#5. Comedians still make fun of Bill's out-of-control appetites, but with Hillary, the mockery is about how she lets nothing be out of control.

Rich Lowry

#6. Often in the past, there have been authors that were deeply disappointed in their adaptation, but that's because they haven't accepted the fact that a movie is a different thing, and it can't possibly be the same as the book.

Lois Lowry

#7. I saw the industrial scene and I was affected by it. I tried to paint it all the time. I tried to paint the industrial scene as best I could. It wasn't easy.

L. S. Lowry

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

Lois Lowry

#9. If everyting's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!" (Jonas)
"It's the choosing that's imortant, isn't it?" The Giver asked him.

Lois Lowry

#10. A life lived following one's dreams and passions is the purest form of existence. It is the only way to truly understand the music of the universe.

Vincent Lowry

#11. It was against the rules for children or adults to look at another's nakedness; but the rule did not apply to newchildren or the Old. Jonas

Lois Lowry

#12. That's why they call you Seer. You see more than most.

Lois Lowry

#13. She's sure, absolutely sure, that what she's waiting for will happen, just the way she wants it to; and I'm so uncertain, so fearful my dreams will end up forgotten somewhere, someday, like a piece of string and a paperclip lying in a dish.

Lois Lowry

#14. The guardians with their stern faces had no creative power. But they had strength and cunning, and they had found a way to steal and harness other people's powers for their own needs. They were forcing the children to describe the future they wanted, not the one that could be.

Lois Lowry

#15. There was no mistaking, even in the uncertain light, the hand, half crabbed, half generous, and wholly drunken, of the Consul himself, the Greek e's, the flying buttresses of d's, the t's like lonely wayside crosses save where they crucified an entire word.

Malcolm Lowry

#16. A bachelor lives like a king and dies like a beggar.

L. S. Lowry

#17. And you know what, Thin Elderly? Sad parts are important. If I ever get to train a new young dreamgiver, that's one of the things I'll teach: that you must include the sad parts, because they are part of the story, and they have to be part of the dreams.

Lois Lowry

#18. Love the sinner, hate the sin? How about: Love the sinner, hate your own sin! I don't have time to hate your sin. There are too many of you! Hating my sin is a full-time job. How about you hate your sin, I'll hate my sin and let's just love each other!

Mark Lowry

#19. I don't know what she is now. A stranger, mostly. It's as if she has become a part of a different world, one that doesn't include me anymore ...

Lois Lowry

#20. One hopes that with a book or movie, the reader or the audience will emerge from it thinking. That's the most you can hope for: that you've raised questions that will be there for the audience to think about later.

Lois Lowry

#21. I am a simple man and I use simple materials: Ivory Black, Vermilion, Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre, Flake White and no medium. That's all I've ever used in my paintings.

L. S. Lowry

#22. You eat canned tuna fish and you absorb protein. Then, if you're lucky, someone give you Dover Sole and you experience nourishment. It's the same with books.

Lois Lowry

#23. If Hillary can't win the nomination - and it's clearly very, very hard for her - she's basically a stalking horse for McCain. She's preparing the demographic ground for McCain, by getting white working-class Democrats used to (if you will) not voting for Obama.

Rich Lowry

#24. If people call me a Sunday painter I'm a Sunday painter who paints every day of the week!

L. S. Lowry

#25. You know, sometimes it's nice to just have someone to blame, even if it has to be yourself, even if it doesn't make sense.

Lois Lowry

#26. It's just that ... without the memories it's all meaningless.

Lois Lowry

#27. That's why we have the Museum, Matty, to remind us of how we came, and why: to start fresh, and begin a new place from what we had learned and carried from the old.

Lois Lowry

#28. Grace was my best friend. I can't let anyone forget her. I'm sure you understand."
Mr. Farrow smiled, but the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Of course, it's easy to rewrite history when we lose a loved one, isn't it? Sometimes we only remember the things we want to remember.

Lisa Roecker

#29. It's definitely an influence, I mean how can you not say you are influenced to play rock.

Mike Lowry

#30. I'm not terribly conversant with children's literature in general. I tend to read books for adults, being an adult.

Lois Lowry

#31. We live in times that are in many ways ambiguous. Maybe that's why kids want precision in what they read - they don't like that moral ambiguity.

Lois Lowry

#32. It's hard to give up the being together with someone.

Lois Lowry

#33. When you lose a child in an accident as I did, it's final - you're not caught in this longing for him, to search for him, knowing he's out there some place.

Lois Lowry

#34. You will fail. Then they will kill you. - Vandara to Kira, following Kira's trial.

Lois Lowry

#35. What comes to me always is a character, a scene, a moment. That's going to be the beginning. Then, as I write, I begin to perceive an ending. I begin to see a destination, although sometimes that changes. And then, of course, there's the whole middle section looming.

Lois Lowry

#36. Because I have two houses, I invariably get immersed in a book and then discover it's at the other house.

Lois Lowry

#37. The debate about the war seems pretty robust and free. Many publications, from the New Yorker to the Nation, feel perfectly comfortable printing anti-American articles and that's fine. That's what the First Amendment is all about.

Rich Lowry

#38. CONSPIRACY is a plan to do something subversive. Three guys planning a camping trip . . . nah, that's just three guys planning a camping trip. But three guys planning to take a camping trip and rob a bank along the way . . . that's a conspiracy.

Lois Lowry

#39. But this room's walls were completely covered by bookcases, filled, which reached to the ceiling. There must have been hundreds - perhaps thousands - of books, their titles embossed in shiny letters.

Lois Lowry

#40. There's no wobble in Bush. If anything, the opposite. Right after hello, the next words out of his mouth are: I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions.

Rich Lowry

#41. It's his gift. You see ahead. He sees beyond. And I . . ." Matty fell silent. He raised one hideously swollen arm and looked listlessly at the pus that seeped through the fabric of his sleeve. Then he laughed harshly. "I can fix a frog.

Lois Lowry

#42. I do one sit up a day. I get up in the morning, that's the first half. I lay down at night, that's the second half.

Mark Lowry

#43. I'm a simple man, and I use simple materials.

L. S. Lowry

#44. We're so accustomed to laughing. It's harder for us when the time comes that we can't laugh.

Lois Lowry

#45. It is Hillary's lot in life not to be able to fake it well.

Rich Lowry

#46. I'll always be grateful to rent collecting. I've put many of the tenants in my pictures.

L. S. Lowry

#47. There were more than usual this time. "It's a big group," Matty whispered to the blind man. "Yes, I can hear that it is. I wonder if somehow they have begun to hear rumors that we may close.

Lois Lowry

#48. The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.

Lois Lowry

#49. I said it because it's true. It's the way

Lois Lowry

#50. Bush's faith in the rightness of his strategy in the broader war is deep-seated. It is a product of faith.

Rich Lowry

#51. I don't set out to transmit a message. I don't write with a political point of view. There are no religious overtones. Looking back at my books, I can say, 'Oh, yes, it is there.' But it's not in my mind when I write.

Lois Lowry

#52. How can I possibly stop loving you when it's sort of predestined? - Malcom Lowry to Carol Brown, 1926 (age 16)

David Eso

#53. I think when you've had success, publishers and reviewers and readers are willing to let you try something new if you've already proven yourself. They're excited about what you're doing, you have people interested in it, and actually waiting for it. It's empowering.

Lois Lowry

#54. You've ruined it now," she said, looking sadly at the crumpled spotted wings in Bethan's outstretched hand. "It deserved to live, and to fly.

Lois Lowry

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

Lois Lowry

#56. I grabbed a Twizzler and almost cracked a tooth biting off the stale ends. I stuck my makeshift red straw into my coffee and took a long sip and was rewarded with a dazzling smile from Maddie.
"Eew. That is so gross." But she was laughing as she said it.
"Yup, something's never change.

Lisa Roecker

#57. He liked the feeling of safety here in this warm and quiet room; he liked the expression of trust on the woman's face as she lay in the water unprotected, exposed, and free.

Louis Lowry

#58. You don't need brains to be a painter, just feelings.

L. S. Lowry

#59. - 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

#60. Hurry through the evening's last light to the homeplace, where the blind

Lois Lowry

#61. Do you know that I no longer see colors?
Jonas's heart broke.

Lois Lowry

#62. On Dreams
Only one thing supersedes the importance of thinking about a better tomorrow. It's taking action today.

Vincent Lowry

#63. It was the only thing I had to do. I worked to get rid of the time, even now I work for something to do. Painting is a wonderful way of getting rid of the days.

L. S. Lowry

#64. Teasing's part of the fun that comes before kissing

Lois Lowry

#65. What's wrong is that we are not participating to make this the type of government it needs to be.

Mike Lowry

#66. If everything's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!

Lois Lowry

#67. It's hard to leave the only place you've known.

Lois Lowry

#68. It's not a great song unless it makes your DNA remember Eden and your spirit long for Home.

Mark Lowry

#69. There will always be a place for bunnies to talk in rhyme, but that's not what I do.

Lois Lowry

#70. Can't you see there's a determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run.

Malcolm Lowry

#71. Al Gore's performances could be a case study in abnormal-psychology classes.

Rich Lowry

#72. Nothing is altered and in spite of God's mercy I am still alone. Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony. There is no explanation of my life. Indeed there was not, nor was this what he'd meant to convey.

Malcolm Lowry

#73. Sometimes we have to hurt people, in order to keep ourselves whole. We must just do it with love, that's all.

Lois Lowry

#74. You installed a GPS tracker on my phone? Seriously?" I was equal parts impressed and horrified. Apparently Seth's obsession with my whereabouts knew no bounds.

Lisa Roecker

#75. Its a little like looking at yourself looking in a mirror looking at yourself looking in a mirror.

Lois Lowry

#76. His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness-and promised answers-he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?"
But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true.

Lois Lowry

#77. When you care about someone and give them something special. Something that they treasire. That's a gift.

Lois Lowry

#78. There was never any comfortable way to mention or discuss one's successes without breaking the rule against bragging, even if one didn't mean to.

Lois Lowry

#79. It's a funny thing about names, how they become a part of someone.

Lois Lowry

#80. Oh, sometimes it's just easier to please people, Maria said finally.

Lois Lowry

#81. To be the master of tomorrow's dreams, you must first be the servant of today's planning.

Vincent Lowry

#82. Don't grow much more, or you will be taller than I am, little Longlegs! Annemarie smiled, but Peter's comment was no longer the lighthearted fun of the past. It was only a brief grasp at something that had gone.

Lois Lowry

#83. And in a democracy, when we say we're mad at what's going on, what we need to be saying is we're mad at ourselves.

Mike Lowry

#84. Clinton's fakery was so deft and deeply ingrained that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the real Bill Clinton began. This constituted a kind of political genius.

Rich Lowry

#85. It's not true. I need all of you. We need each other.

Lois Lowry

#86. Life here is so orderly, so predictable-so painless. It's what they've chosen.

Lois Lowry

#87. You can pretend that bad things will never happen. But life's a lot easier if you realize and admit that sometimes they do.

Lois Lowry

#88. The material's out there, a calm lake waiting for us to dive in.

Beverly Lowry

#89. Now you see what kind of creatures we are, Hugh. Eating things alive. That's what we do. How can you have much respect for mankind, or any belief in the social struggle?

Malcolm Lowry

#90. I don't read young adult or children's books, now that my grandchildren are beyond the age of my reading to them. I read reviews, and so I'm aware of what's out there. But I tend not to read the books.

Lois Lowry

#91. It's interesting that so many books now are published as the first in a series. It never occurred to me. Although 'The Giver' does have an ambiguous ending. I've heard about that from readers over the years.

Lois Lowry

#92. Try persuading the world not to cut its throat for half a decade or more ... and it'll begin to dawn on you that even your behavior's part of its plan.

Malcolm Lowry

#93. The mind can't explain it, and you can't make it go away. It's called love.

Lois Lowry

#94. It's as if the sea sucked away her past and left her empty.

Lois Lowry

#95. Artist?' Thomas suggested. 'That's a word. I've never heard anyone say it, but I've read it in some of the books. It means, well, someone who makes something beautiful. Would that be a word?

Lois Lowry

#96. Many of the books I loved as a kid, that even my mother read as a child, are very slow going. Today's children are not as patient. The best example of this is 'The Secret Garden,' which I adored as a child.

Lois Lowry

#97. It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?

Lois Lowry

#98. Annemarie's silvery blond hair flew behind her,

Lois Lowry

#99. Cooking's a bother.

Lois Lowry

#100. I'm going to be a warrior," Jaybird said to Mouse.
She flew beside him as he walked through tall grasses and rolling hills.
Mouse cocked his head. "Oh? How's that?"
"I'll find a teacher," said Jay. "I'll train and train and become the best, then I'll lead all the other warriors!

B.T. Lowry