Lois Lowry Quotes

A stage adaptation of The Giver has been performed in cities and towns across the USA for years. More recently an opera has been composed and performed. And soon there will be a film. Does The Giver have the same effect when it is presented in a different way: It's hard to know. A book, to me is almost sacrosanct: such an individual and private thing. The reader brings his or her own history and beliefs and concerns, and reads in solitude, creating each scene from his own imagination as he does. There is no fellow ticket-holder in the next seat. The important thing is that another medium--stage, film, music--doesn't obliterate a book. The movie is here now, on a big screen, with stars and costumes and a score. But the book hasn't gone away. It has simply grown up, grown larger, and begun to glisten in a new way.

You remember that I told you it was safer not to know. But,' he went on, as his hands moved wuth their sure and practiced motion, 'I will tell you just a little, because you were so very brave.'Brave?' Annemarie asked, surprised. 'No, I wasn't. I was very frightened.'You risked your life.'But I didn't even think about that! I was only thinking of-'He interrupted her,smiling. 'That's all that brave means-not thinking about the dangers. Just thinking about what you must do. Of course you were frightened. I was too, today. But you kept your mind on what you had to do. So did I.

I brug you two [gifts] . . . I gots the little here in my pockie.' He dug one hand deep into his pocket and pulled out a handful of nuts and a dead grasshopper. 'Nope. Be the other side.' (Matt)

The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same.

He wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself.

It was harder for the ones who were waiting, Annemarie knew. Less danger, perhaps, but more fear.

It was the helplessness that scared the both of us.

I cannot kill someone, he thought.