Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I was fortunate to live for 3 years in another country, and although we lived in an American compound, still as a young adolescent I did venture into the world of the Japanese with great interest and enjoyment. But many Americans never left that safe and familiar life among their own people. "

Related Quotes:

" I don't read young adult or children's books, now that my grandchildren are beyond the age of my reading to them. I read reviews, and so I'm aware of what's out there. But I tend not to read the books. "

Lois Lowry

Reading

Grandchildren

Age

" People do things that turn out badly, often for the most benevolent of reasons. "

" I've always been interested in medicine and was pleased when my brother became a doctor. But after thinking seriously about that field, I realized that what intrigued me was not the science, not the chemistry or biology of medicine, but the narrative - the story of each patient, each illness. "

Lois Lowry

Doctor

Science

" People can lie in letters, but they tend not to. They certainly lie in memoirs. "

" Early on I came to realize something, and it came from the mail I received from kids. That is, kids at that pivotal age, 12, 13 or 14, they're still deeply affected by what they read, some are changed by what they read, books can change the way they feel about the world in general. I don't think that's true of adults as much. "

" Most people remember being 4 objectively, as if they're seeing a movie of a 4-year-old. But me, if you ask me to think about when I'm 4, I can feel myself being 4, and I am there, looking out through my 4-year-old eyes. "

Lois Lowry

Eyes

People

" So many of my books, I don't want to say they have messages, but they have important things to say. "

" Often in the past, there have been authors that were deeply disappointed in their adaptation, but that's because they haven't accepted the fact that a movie is a different thing, and it can't possibly be the same as the book. "

" I majored in English in college, so I read the classic dystopian novels like '1984' and 'Brave New World.' "

" Oddly, the military world is one of great sameness. There is an orderly quality to life on an army base, and even the children of the military are brought up with that sense of order and sameness. "

" I think teens are drawn to these speculative books that portray what might happen and what could happen. "

" I never, as a reader, have been particularly interested in dystopian literature or science fiction or, in fact, fantasy. "

" There will always be a place for bunnies to talk in rhyme, but that's not what I do. "

" I don't set out to transmit a message. I don't write with a political point of view. There are no religious overtones. Looking back at my books, I can say, 'Oh, yes, it is there.' But it's not in my mind when I write. "

" Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world. "

" In my writing, I focus lenses. I'm almost always seeing when I am writing. "

Lois Lowry

Seeing

Writing

" Many of the books I loved as a kid, that even my mother read as a child, are very slow going. Today's children are not as patient. The best example of this is 'The Secret Garden,' which I adored as a child. "

" Because I have two houses, I invariably get immersed in a book and then discover it's at the other house. "

" You rehear your life by reading about what happens to other people. "

" If we as writers could predict what readers grab on to, we would write it. "

" I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along. "

" My mind is always on whatever next project I'm working on. "

" The grand surprise has really been the fact that being an author, which to me had always implied being a private person, actually requires you to be a public person as well, and those are two separate entities to me. "

Lois Lowry

Surprise

Two

" I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors. "

" I always set out to tell a good story, to create a character that young people can relate to, place them in a situation that will be interesting, intriguing, eventually suspenseful. But what I find is that after I do that, then there are themes that emerge, which teachers can then use to provoke discussion and debate. "

" When I moved from Cambridge, I donated all my fiction. I carefully cut out pages the authors had autographed for me. I didn't want those autographed books showing up on eBay. "

Lois Lowry

Showing Up

Books

" I've always been fascinated by memory and dreams because they are both completely our own. No one else has the same memories. No one has the same dreams. "

" It's interesting that so many books now are published as the first in a series. It never occurred to me. Although 'The Giver' does have an ambiguous ending. I've heard about that from readers over the years. "

" I think of every book as a single entity, and some have later gone on to become a series, often at the request of readers. "

" One hopes that with a book or movie, the reader or the audience will emerge from it thinking. That's the most you can hope for: that you've raised questions that will be there for the audience to think about later. "