Top 100 Quotes About Boyne
#1. I had come to Boyne City because I have always been drawn to nature's secrets more than to, say Hollywood's secrets or the secrets of Wall Street hedge-fund managers. Nature is real. It exists beyond our ability to create it or even mediate it.
Langdon Cook
#2. Being some country lad from the banks of the River Boyne, I never wanted to be wealthy. I was driven by artistic intention.
Pierce Brosnan
#3. My life started on the banks of the Boyne in County Meath. Navan is the name of the town; only me, Mom, Dad.
Pierce Brosnan
#4. A religion is not the church a man goes to but the cosmos he lives in; and if any sceptic forgets it, the maddest fanatic beating an Orange drum about the Battle of the Boyne is a better philosopher than he.
G.K. Chesterton
#5. Father laughed, which upset Bruno even more; there was nothing that made him more angry than when a grown-up laughed at him for not knowing something, especially when he was trying to find out the answer by asking questions.
John Boyne
#6. Those people ... well, they're not people at all, Bruno
John Boyne
#7. the ground for I know not how long. Of course
John Boyne
#8. There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you?
It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.
John Boyne
#9. It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.
John Boyne
#10. I think i'm just breathing, that's all. And there's a difference between breathing and being alive.
John Boyne
#11. It has always astonished me, Georgy Daniilovich, that those who are most repulsed by autocratic or dictatorial rule are among the first to eliminate their enemies once they take on the mantle of power themselves.
John Boyne
#12. Bruno. 'In Berlin we had a big house with five floors if you counted the
John Boyne
#13. (J)ust because your version of normal isn't the same as someone else's version doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.
John Boyne
#14. 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
#15. When he closed his eyes, everything around him just felt empty and cold, as if he was in the loneliest place in the world. The middle of nowhere.
John Boyne
#16. I was a very quiet child, quite introverted, really. Independent, yes; I didn't need a lot of supervision. Less so than I did when I got older, maybe. But I was a bookish child, not surprisingly. I could sit quite happily in a corner for hours and entertain myself with books.
John Boyne
#17. It's a big world, isn't it?' said Georgie. 'Do you think they hate each other on other planets too?
John Boyne
#18. In school, the other girls formed alliances which always excluded me. They called me names; I will not repeat them here. They made fun of my unshapely body, my pale skin, my untamed hair. I do not know why I was born this way.
John Boyne
#19. And I am not one of these long-living fictional characters who prays for death as a release from the captivity of eternal life; not for me the endless whining and wailing of the undead.
John Boyne
#20. Other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of a cupboard.
John Boyne
#21. I never really noticed it any more, in the way that one often ignores familiar things, like seat cushions or loved ones.
John Boyne
#22. You are not there, Father," I cried. "I wake up at Gaudlin Hall, I spend most of my day there, I sleep there at night. And throughout it all there is but one thought running through my mind."
"And that is?"
"This house is haunted.
John Boyne
#23. 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
#24. If it wasn't for the fact that Bruno was nowhere near as skinny as the boys on his side of the fence, and not quite so pale either, it would have been difficult to tell them apart. It was almost (Shmuel thought) as if they were all exactly the same really.
John Boyne
#25. Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.
John Boyne
#27. He put his face to the glass and saw what was out there, and this time when his eyes opened wide and his mouth made the shape of an O, his hands stayed by his sides because something made him feel very cold and unsafe.
John Boyne
#28. When I make mistakes I get punished,' insisted Bruno, irritated by the fact that the rules that always applied to children never seemed to apply to grown-ups at all (despite the fact that they were the ones ho enforced them).
John Boyne
#29. There are days when I rather detest living in the year 1867. Everything moves so quickly. Change is happening at such a pace. I preferred the way of life thirty years ago when I was a boy.
John Boyne
#30. Can I ask you something? He added after a moment.
'yes,' said Shmuel.
Bruno thought about it. He wanted to phrase the question just right.
'why are there so many people on that side of the fence?' He asked. 'And what are you all doing there?
John Boyne
#31. We all are [normal]. Their idea of normal just happens to be different to some other people's idea of normal. But this is the world we live in. Some people simply cannot accept something that is outside of their experience.
John Boyne
#32. Let's just hope we get to come back here someday when all this is over
John Boyne
#33. Gretel: Not the type of children I want to play with.
Bruno: I could come over on a visit and no one would be any the wiser.
John Boyne
#34. And been committed to a home for the bewildered
John Boyne
#35. The truth is that I can't remember a moment when I didn't want to be a writer. From childhood, I loved books, I loved stories and I loved writing my own
John Boyne
#36. It occurs to me that even though Zoya and I are both still alive, my life is already over. She will be taken from me soon and there will be no reason for me to continue without her. We are one person, you see. We are GeorgyandZoya.
John Boyne
#37. 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
#38. No woman will ever take care of my children but me, she said. I will not allow it, do you understand?
And after I am gone Madge Toxley, if you try to make them yours, then you will live to regret it.
John Boyne
#39. There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.
John Boyne
#40. I would have dearly liked to close the French doors between us for a bit of peace, but Mam wouldn't allow it; she said that solitude would give me ideas and the last thing a boy of my age needed was ideas.
John Boyne
#41. Leaving me an orphan like those characters I had spoken of the night before, if one can truly be called an orphan at twenty-one years of age.
John Boyne
#42. Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away.
John Boyne
#43. Of course all this happened a long time ago. And nothing like that could happen again, not in this day and age.
John Boyne
#44. Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty.
John Boyne
#45. He knew that sometimes people who were sad didn't want to be asked about it; sometimes they'd offer the information themselves and sometimes they wouldn't stop talking about it for months on end, but on this occasion Bruno thought that he should wait before saying anything.
John Boyne
#46. He didn't want to play football. He wanted to be told the truth.
John Boyne
#47. I think this was a bad idea,' he repeated. 'I think the best thing to do would be to forget all about this and just go back home. We can chalk it up to experience,
John Boyne
#48. 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
#49. Just don't ever tell yourself that you didn't know ... That would be the worst crime of all.
John Boyne
#50. 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
#51. It's a wonderful thing to write for children.
John Boyne
#52. You look like a Greek God sent down by the immortal Zeus from Mount Olympus to taunt the rest of us inferior beings with your astonishing beauty, I said, which somehow in translation came out as "you look fine, why?
John Boyne
#53. I move between the two: I write an adult novel, and then I write a children's book. I quite enjoy that. It's a nice change of pace each time.
John Boyne
#54. I think that books for young people should have serious and important themes, they shouldn't be trivial. So the books I write, they would be the kind of stories you would write in an adult novel only they just happen to feature a child at the center of them.
John Boyne
#55. It's enough to make me laugh. I close the door behind me and sit down again, considering this, and truly, I find it so funny that I laugh until I cry.
And when the tears come I think aah ...
So this is what it means to be alone.
John Boyne
#56. The dot that became a speck that became a blob that became a figure that became a boy
John Boyne
#57. Answer me!'Shouted Lieutenant Kotler. 'Did you steal something from that fridge?' 'No, sir. He gave it to me,'said Shmuel, tears welling up in his eyes as he throw a sideways glance at Bruno. 'He's my friend,'he added.
John Boyne
#58. Don't make it worse by thinking it's more painful than it actually is.
John Boyne
#59. 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
#60. Retractable roof, a pair of black, white and red
John Boyne
#61. 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
#62. Children's book writers tend to feel quite superior, and adult writers tend to feel they wouldn't know how to write a children's book - which might surprise you because I think a lot of people think it's the other way around.
John Boyne
#63. A home is not a building or a street or a city or something so artificial as bricks and mortar. A home is where one's family is ...
John Boyne
#64. People try to glorify war, particularly those who aren't actually fighting in them. People tend to make heroes of those who are fighting in them.
John Boyne
#65. Children's authors don't talk down or patronise their younger readers.
John Boyne
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. Regrets and apologies are all very well, but there's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them. They're like brands.
John Boyne
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. With the adult ones, I feel I need to get as deep inside the psychology of a character as I can, and that needs to be first-person. In the children's books, I feel I need some distance. I don't want to be the nine-year-old at the center of the story. I need to have some type of narrative voice.
John Boyne
#72. War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.
John Boyne
#73. 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
#74. Heil Hitler," he said, which, he presumed, was another way of saying, "Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.
John Boyne
#75. Should women read, Miss Caine? There's a question for you. Does it excite them too much?
John Boyne
#76. And shortly after that the blob became a figure. And then, as Bruno got even closer, he saw that the thing was neither a dot nor a speck nor a blob nor a figure, but a person.
John Boyne
#77. Do you think ... ?
'I do sometimes, my boy,'admitted the old man. 'When I can't avoid it.
John Boyne
#78. I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay.
John Boyne
#79. Peaceful in the knowledge that a long and happy relationship negates the need for constant chatter. Zoya and I had long perfected the art of sitting silently in each other's company for hours on end, while never running out of things to say.
John Boyne
#80. [...] Wasn't it lonely? Your life, I mean."
"Yes."
"You're alone?"
"Yes."
"You live alone?"
"I am entirely alone, Marian," I repeated quietly.
John Boyne
#81. I think perhaps the adults we become are formed in childhood and there's no way around it.
John Boyne
#82. 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
#83. He had never felt so ashamed in his life; he had never imagined that he could behave so cruelly. He wondered how a boy who thought he was a good person really could act in such a cowardly way towards a friend.
John Boyne
#84. Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.
John Boyne
#85. death was a natural phenomenon, albeit a sorrowful one for those left behind, but one that every man and woman must accept as the price we pay for life.
John Boyne
#86. I don't understand why we're not allowed on the oder side of the fence. What's so wrong with us that we can't go there and play?
John Boyne
#87. I have always been a lover of the sun, even if, through spending a lifetime in Ireland, I have had little personal connection with it.
John Boyne
#88. Don't you ever think,' he asked cautiously, 'that it would be better to be a bully than to be bullied? At least that way no one could ever hurt you.'
Katarina turned to him in amazement. 'No,' she said definitively, shaking her head. 'No Pieter, I never think that, not for a moment.
John Boyne
#89. Both boys stayed very quiet for a few minutes, neither one wanting to say anything he might regret.
John Boyne
#90. Neither your mother nor I have any imagination at all and we certainly didn't bring you up to have one
John Boyne
#91. 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
#92. Throughout my teenage years, I read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens every December. It was a story that never failed to excite me, for as well as being a Dickens enthusiast, I have always loved ghost stories.
John Boyne
#93. Pavel is not a doctor any more, Bruno' said Maria quietly. 'But he was. In another life. Before he came here
John Boyne
#94. Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that?
John Boyne
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. We don't have the luxury of thinking ... Some people make all the decisions for us
John Boyne
#98. The history that one can create with a friend, a lifetime of history and shared experience, is a wonderful thing and shabbily sacrificed. And yet a true friend is a rare thing; sometimes those whom we perceive as friends are simply people with whom we spend a lot of time.
John Boyne
#99. 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
#100. Because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.' Bruno
John Boyne
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