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DNA tells you all the secrets of life,’ he used to say. Except for one—how to live it.
Jennifer Donnelly -
It's only the body that's gone. Only the body. There's a part that doesn't go in the ground, a part that stays inside you forever.
Jennifer Donnelly
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Turn away. From the darkness, the madness, the pain. Open your eyes and look at the light.
Jennifer Donnelly -
For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Stop yelling. If everyone’s yelling, no one can be heard.
Jennifer Donnelly -
I play until my fingers are blue and stiff from the cold, and then I keep on playing. Until I'm lost in the music. Until I am the music--notes and chords, the melody and harmony. It hurts, but it's okay because when I'm the music, I'm not me. Not sad. Not afraid. Not desperate. Not guilty.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Sometimes, when you catch someone unaware at just the right time and in just the right light, you can catch sight of what they will be.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.
Jennifer Donnelly
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Writers are damned liars. Every single one of them.
Jennifer Donnelly -
But words are more powerful than anything.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Only the hopeless love God.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths... The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that... But the second kind, they show you life more like it is... The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up.
Jennifer Donnelly -
My father had put these things on the table. I looked at him standing by the sink. He was washing his hands, splashing water on his face. My mamma left us. My brother, too. And now my feckless, reckless uncle had as well. My pa stayed, though. My pa always stayed. I looked at him. And saw the sweat stains on his shirt. And his big, scarred hands. And his dirty, weary face. I remembered how, lying in my bed a few nights before, I had looked forward to showing him my uncle's money. To telling him I was leaving. And I was so ashamed.
Jennifer Donnelly -
He loves the sparkling fountains and their cascades and says the strangest things as he watches them. they look like stars breaking. Or, They look like Mama's diamonds. Or, They look like all the souls in heaven.
Jennifer Donnelly
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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.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Her grey eyes sparkled with passion as she spoke. Sid looked into them and for a second he glimpsed her soul. He saw what she was - fierce and brave. Upright. Impatient. And good. So good that she would sit covered in gore, shout at dangerous men, and keep a long, lonely vigil - all to save the likes of him. He realized she was a rare creature, as rare as a rose in winter.
Jennifer Donnelly -
You are a ghost, Andi," she says. "Almost gone." I look at her. I want to say something but I can't get the words out. She squeezes my hands. "Come back to us," she says. And she's gone.
Jennifer Donnelly -
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.
Jennifer Donnelly -
She's got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure.
Jennifer Donnelly -
I listened as the words became sentences and the sentences became pages and the pages became feelings and voices and places and people.
Jennifer Donnelly
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Never take what's offered, always ask for more.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Cripes Miss Wilcox, they're not guns,' I said. No, they're not Mattie, they're books. And a hundred times more dangerous.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Namaste. It was a Nepalese greeting. It meant: The light within me bows to the light within you.
Jennifer Donnelly -
Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins.
Jennifer Donnelly