John Boyne Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• ... Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty.

  John Boyne

  Boys, Years, Immaturity

  5 Copy quote

• There will be outrage and disgust and people will turn on me at the last, they will hate me, my reputation will forever be destroyed, my punishment earned, self-inflicted like this gunshot wound, and the world will finally know that I was the greatest feather man of them all.

  John Boyne

  Hate, Men, Self

  9 Copy quote

• I like the idea of standalone novels. I always found with series of books, it's something that publishers love obviously because they can make a lot of money and they build an audience from book to book, but I don't like that as a writer. I prefer the idea of just telling a story, completing it within your book, and moving on and not forcing a child to read eight of them.

  John Boyne

  Children, Moving, Book

  "John Boyne hates celebrity children's books". Interview with Kelly Gallucci, www.usatoday.com. April 11, 2014.

  8 Copy quote

• I enjoy the research element. There are so many stories from the past that interest me, that I want to learn more about, just as an interested person. And if I'm going to learn, if I'm going to research, it's probably going to lead me to writing a novel.

  John Boyne

  Writing, Past, Elements

  4 Copy quote

• I don't change the language for children books. I don't make the language simpler. I use words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. The books are shorter, but there's just not that much difference other than that to be honest. And the funny thing is, I have adult writer friends [to whom I would say], "Would you think of writing a children's book?" and they go, "No, God, I wouldn't know how." They're quite intimidated by the concept of it. And when I say to children's books writers, would they write an adult book, they say no because they think they're too good for it.

  John Boyne

  Children, Book, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, Book, Writing

  "John Boyne hates celebrity children's books". Interview with Kelly Gallucci, www.usatoday.com. April 11, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay. But when I found the right story, I saw it as an opportunity to write about being a teenager and being gay. Most people, whether you're gay or straight or whatever, have experienced that relationship where one person is much more interested than the other.

  John Boyne

  Teenager, Writing, Gay

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I am frustrated by celebrities who decide to write children's books because they think it's easy. That drives me crazy. It's frustrating because it's unfair to children. Because they'll get a lot of attention, they'll get a lot of marketing budget and so on just because they're a celebrity - the Madonnas, the Ricky Gervaises, the Russell Brands.

  John Boyne

  Children, Crazy, Book

  4 Copy quote

• Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away. As a writer, my interest has become in writing about much more emotional, personal topics. I'm trying to reach into subjects I have never written about before.

  John Boyne

  Writing, Past, Emotional

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I hope for so much from every book I read. And time and again, I find myself disappointed. I look across my bookshelves and see hundreds of titles which in my memory seem merely mediocre or second-rate. Only occasionally does a novel appear for which I feel a lasting passion, a book that I think could in time become a classic.

  John Boyne

  Memories, Book, Passion

  4 Copy quote

• It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.

  John Boyne

  Years, Events, Dublin

  4 Copy quote

• Today people can see and protest all the different interests that want war to happen, the people it financially benefits. The First World War wasn't fought for that reason. The Second World War wasn't fought for that reason. Your entire country and way of life could be overtaken.

  John Boyne

  Country, War, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, Distance, Book

  "John Boyne hates celebrity children's books". Interview with Kelly Gallucci, www.usatoday.com. April 11, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.

  John Boyne

  War, Cnn, Television

  "For John Boyne, Love is a Battlefield". Interview with Royal Young, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 11, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, Book, Independent

  "John Boyne hates celebrity children's books". Interview with Kelly Gallucci, www.usatoday.com. April 11, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Children, Boys, Stairs

  John Boyne (2012). “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, p.19, Random House

  10 Copy quote

• The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. This was nothing like the kind of quiet he heard when he woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. When that happened, there were always strange, unidentifiable sounds seeping into his room from the tiny gaps where the windowpanes weren't sealed together correctly. At those moments he could always tell there was life outside, even if all that life was fast asleep. It was a silence that wasn't silence at all.

  John Boyne

  Dream, Night, Silence

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Coward, Tumbling, Irony

  John Boyne (2011). “The Absolutist”, p.285, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Taken, Alive, Life Is

  John Boyne (2009). “The House of Special Purpose”, p.26, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• I can't bear to be on a train without a book", she announced. " It's a form of self-defence in a way" .

  John Boyne

  Book, Self, Way

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Grandmother, Costumes, Pretending

  4 Copy quote

• You’re my best friend, Shmuel,’ he said. ‘My best friend for life.

  John Boyne

  My Best Friend, Shmuel, Friends For Life

  73 Copy quote

• 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

  Heart, Eight, Feet

  "The Absolutist". Book by John Boyne, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• I started reading Dickens when I was about 12, and I particularly liked all of the orphan books. I always liked books about young people who are left on their own with the world, and the four children's books I've written feature that very thing: children that are abandoned by their families or running away from their families or ignored by their families and having to grow up quicker than they should, like David Copperfield - having to be the hero of their own story.

  John Boyne

  Running, Growing Up, Children

  "John Boyne hates celebrity children's books". Interview with Kelly Gallucci, www.usatoday.com. April 11, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Fighting, Animal, Mind

  5 Copy quote

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