There was just a moment when things weren’t quite the same, weren’t quite as they had always been through the long friendship.
It’s hard to give up the being together with someone.
I think ‘The Giver’ is such a moral book, so filled with important truths, that I couldn’t believe anyone would want to suppress it, to keep it from kids.
For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.
What’s important is the preparation for adult life, and the training you’ll receive in your Assignment.
Reading is the most important way to prepare for life.
Gathering Blue’ was a separate book. I wanted to explore what a society might become after a catastrophic world event. Only at the end did I realize I could make it connect to ‘The Giver.
I think I’ve written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I’m an introspective person.
I left home at the correct time but when I was riding along near the hatchery, the crew was separating some salmon, I guess I just got distraught, watching them.
I don’t know what she is now. A stranger, mostly. It’s as if she has become a part of a different world, one that doesn’t include me anymore...
The community of the Giver had achieved at such great price. A community without danger or pain. But also, a community without music, color or art. And books.
Sometimes I wish they’d ask for my wisdom more often – there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable – so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen.
And it was lonely, to yearn, all alone.
It be better, I think, to climb out in search of something, instead of hating, what you’re leaving.
I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.
And they are beginning to realize that the world they live in is a place where the right thing is often hard, sometimes dangerous, and frequently unpopular.
When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong, every single time.
Now he saw another elephant emerge from the place where it had stood hidden in the trees. Very slowly it walked to the mutilated body and looked down. With its sinuous trunk it struck the huge corpse; then it reached up, broke some leafy branches with a snap, and draped them over the mass of torn thick flesh. Finally it tilted its massive head, raised its trunk, and roared into the empty landscape.
Pretending doesn’t keep you safe.
The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same.