Jennifer Donnelly Quotes

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

DNA tells you all the secrets of life,’ he used to say. Except for one—how to live it.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Becuse God loves us, but the devil takes an interest.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Only the hopeless love God.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

God loves us, but the devil takes an interest.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

I think your vision gets better as you get older.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

There were times when I lifted my face to the sky, stretched my arms wide to the winter night, and laughed out loud, so happy was I.The memory of it makes me laugh now, but not from happiness.Be careful what you show the world.You never know when the wolf is watching.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

The greenest of pastures are right here on earth.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

And then I remember this morning and I wonder if it really happened or if I dreamed it. It was nice. And weird. And tender. I'm not used to tender. It's a fossil, that word. Conditions changed and it died out. Like the woolly mammoth. It just couldn't live in the same world as dick box. Ho dog. Or wiener cousins.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

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.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

We all make mistakes, the danger lies in letting those mistakes make us. Make us believe we can't put things right. Make us think there's no hope. Make us give up.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

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.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

You can't argue with the dead, no matter what you say, they always have the last word.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

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.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

A new word. Bright with possibilities. A flawless pearl to turn over and over in my hand, then put away for safekeeping.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

...Listen to your own thoughts and feelings very carefully, be aware of your observations, and learn to value them. When you're a teenager—and even when you're older—lots of people will try to tell you what to think and feel. Try to stand still inside all of that and hear your own voice. It's yours and only yours, it's unique and worth of your attention, and if you cultivate it properly, it might just make you a writer.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

You should spend more time reading the Good Book and less reading all those novels. What are you going to tell the Lord on Judgement Day when He asks you why you didn't read your bible? Hmm? I said. To myself.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

He who cannot endure the bad will not live to see the good.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

An escape can become escapism before we even know it. Books are wonderful things, but you can't live in someone else's story. You have to live your own story.

~ 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

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.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

French Louis Seymour of the West Canada Creek, who knew how to survive all alone in a treacherous wilderness, and Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt of New York City and Raquette Lake, who was richer than God and traveled in his very own Pullman car, and Emmie Hubbard of the Uncas Road, who painted the most beautiful pictures when she was drunk and burned them in her woodstove when she was sober, were all ten times more interesting to me than Milton's devil or Austen's boy-crazy girls or that twitchy fool of Poe's who couldn't think of any place better to bury a body than under his own damn floor.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

But eating was the last thing on my mind. And I didn't see how Miss Wilcox could eat, or teach, or sleep or ever find any reason to leave this room. Not with all these books in it, just begging to be read.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

You fear you will fail at the very thing you were born for. And your fear torments you...instead of shunning your fear, you must let it speak and listen carefully to what it's trying to tell you. It will give you good counsel.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Her fear was strong, but her need for the truth was stronger.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Serafina, Ava, Ling, and Becca swam inside. Neela followed them, but at the very last second, shield. “I can’t,” she said. “Once I go in, there’s no way out again. This is real. You’re real. All this time, a part of me was hoping you were only a dream.”The witch cocked her head. “Only a dream?” she said mockingly. “Long ago, a great mage dreamed of stealing the gods’ powers. Abbadon was born of that dream. Atlantis died because of it. Now, because of a new dreamer, all the waters of the world may fall. There is nothing more real than a dream.” She nodded at the waters behind Neela. Silt was rising in the distance, a great deal of it. “The merman Traho knows this. He’s coming. If you do not believe me, perhaps he can convince you.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Headstrong is just a word, Katie - a word others call you when you don't do what they want.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

He's wearing boots, a kilt, and a long-sleeve tee. No coat, even though it's December. Beautiful people don't need coats. They've got their auras to keep them warm.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

It's a good thing you and your pills weren't around a few hundred years ago or there never would have been a Vermeer or a Caravaggio. You'd have drugged Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Taking of Christ right the hell out of them.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

I grew up on a mixed diet of mass and class, and I still read that way. I hate it when people apologize for what they read. Some bestsellers aren't exactly literary. So what? They're fun and rip-roaring, Who instituted the book police and why do we have to answer them? Grrrrr!

~ Jennifer Donnelly

History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.

~ 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

History is fiction.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

One expects decent people to stand up for the good of all. Decent people shut their doors and hide behind them as decent people do. Massacres could never happen if it weren't for decent people.

~ 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