Jennifer Donnelly Quotes
-
I will go out again this very night with my rockets and fuses. I will blow them straight out of their comfortable beds. Blow the rooftops off their houses. Blow the black, wretched night to bits. I will not stop. For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient.
-
I don't like hope very much. In fact, I hate it. It's the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard. It's bad news. The worst. It's sharp sticks and cherry bombs. When hope shows up, it's only a matter of time until someone gets hurt.
-
Because just for a few seconds, someone else hurts, too. For just a few seconds, I'm not alone.
-
And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.
-
Turn away. From the darkness, the madness, the pain. Open your eyes and look at the light.
-
The world goes on, as stupid and brutal as tomorrow as it was today. And though I am shuddering with pain, and twisting with pain, and sobbing with pain, i laugh.Because I know now. I know the answer. I know the truth. Oh,dead man, you are dead wrong, I tell him.Can't you see? The world goes on, stupid and brutal, but I [do not. I do not.]
-
What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed.
-
The rain comes down harder as I write. It sheets off the roof in torrents. I wish it would pound against me. Pound the life from my body. The flesh from my bones. The pain from my heart.
-
There was a basket at her feet. She reached into it and lifted out the head of a young woman, a marquise. She wore Bourbon white to her death, but wears the tricolor now - white cheeks, blue lips, red dripping from her neck. Long live the revolution.
-
There is an advantage to be found in most everything that happens to you, even if it is not immediately apparent.
-
I struggled for a long time to get anything published.
-
Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too. And I—I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone—I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him.
-
Funny, 'ow you can 'old a jewel in your 'and, and toss it away, and not even know what you 'ad until it's gone.
-
Because I'm on the phone, Mom!" "Fooling around with your friends again! Who is that?" "Ahmadinejad." "Oh, my goodness! What is he saying?" "That he wants to see Jeezy at the Beacon tonight. Putin's going too. He scalped a ticket from Kim Jong Il. All tha gangstas are going." "Don't be so fresh, young man!" "Gotta go," he says to me. "Enemy forces have dropped a Momshell." "Fall back, solider. Over and out.
-
Because beautiful things never last. Not roses nor snow… And not fireworks, either.
-
I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.
-
Things are NEVER what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was.
-
I play until my fingertips are raw. Until I rip a nail and bleed on the strings. Until my hands hurt so bad I forget my heart does.
-
Only the hopeless love God.
-
The greenest of pastures are right here on earth.
-
With 'A Northern Light,' I've already heard from teenage readers, teachers, librarians - it's been so gratifying. It's amazing that you can take something that matters so deeply to you and make it matter to someone else.
-
Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard.
-
He who cannot endure the bad will not live to see the good.
-
We're not punished for our sins, lad. We're punished by them.