Top 250 Jennifer Donnelly Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

102. “I will go out again this very night with my rockets and fuses. I will blow them straight out of their comfortable beds. Blow the rooftops off their houses. Blow the black, wretched night to bits. I will not stop. For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

103. “Don’t let the darkness that’s been visited upon this family pull you in so deeply, you cannot get out. Turn back from it, darling Jo... he’d warned her. He didn’t seem to understand that turning your back on the darkness didn’t mean the darkness would turn its back on you.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

104. “But all we need to do is begin. The rest will take care of itself. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

105. “It’s not pride I’m feeling. It’s another sin. Worse than all the other ones, which are immediate, violent, and hot. This one sits inside you quietly and eats you from the inside out like the trichina worms the pigs get. It’s the Eighth Deadly Sin. The one God left out. Hope.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

106. “Life’s all about the revolution, isn’t it?” he said. “The one inside, I mean.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

107. “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

108. “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

109. “Sometimes you have to do wrong to do right.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

110. “Can’t you see that the courage to risk, to dare, to toss that gold coin up in the air over and over again, win or lose, is what makes humans human? They are fragile, doomed creatures, blinder than worms yet braver than the gods.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

111. “Every heart is made of stories.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

112. “One is not born knowing how to lead, one learns.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

113. “But his words fall away. He looks confused. He looks flustered and sorry. Like you do when you run up to someone you think you know and take her arm and she turns around and you were wrong.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

114. “That’s what we do with our pain,” she said, watching the butterfly rise. “We make it into something beautiful.” “We make it into something meaningful,” said the diva. “We make it matter,” whispered the actress.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

115. “Life can be so difficult, and stories help us escape those difficulties. It’s all right to lose yourself in one.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

116. “Writers are damned liars. Every single one of them.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

117. “The greenest of pastures are right here on earth.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

118. “Know that you are a warrior... and that a true warrior carries love, courage, and her conscience into battle, as surely as she carries her sword.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

119. “It’s good that you still cry,” Isabelle whispered to her. “It’s when you stop crying that you’re lost.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

120. “Each queen was once a girl like you; told who to be and what to do. Not pretty, not pleasing, far too rough. Lacking, less than, not enough. Till wounded subjects, anguished dead, mattered more than things that others said. Then like a flag, her will unfold. Go now girl, remake the world!”

— Jennifer Donnelly

121. “Sophie lowered her head into her hands, feeling as if she were made of the thinnest glass, so brittle and fragile that the softest tap could shatter her. She had escaped death only to come face-to-face with it once more.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

122. “People come out of the woods and pretend to be your friends. They offer you something – laces, a comb – and you take them. Stop it. Stop taking poison from fake friends. It’ll kill you.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

123. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

125. “The worst day above ground is better than any day under it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

126. “History books say that kings and dukes and generals start wars. Don’t believe it. We start them, you and I. Every time we turn away, keep quiet, stay out of it, behave ourselves.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

127. “Help the others believe, Serafina. Help Ling believe she can break through the silences. Help Neela believe her greatest power comes from within, not without. Help Becca believe the warmest fire is the one that’s shared. Help Ava believe the gods did know what they were doing. That’s what a leader does – she inspires other to believe in themselves.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

128. “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

129. “Airports should all belong to the same country. The country of Crappacia. Or Bleakovania. Or Suckitan.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

130. “If you wait for someone else to make things better, you’ll be waiting a very long time.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

131. “She was his soulmate, as much a part of him as the very flesh and bone that made him. She was with him, in him, in everything he did. She was everything he wanted from his life, the very measure of his dreams.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

132. “Beautiful people don’t need coats. They’ve got their auras to keep them warm.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

133. “It is hope, not despair, that undoes us all.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

134. “The truth can be a hard thing, Jo. It’s often best left hidden.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

135. “For the first time, I saw what was in his heart, and I wondered if he might ever want to look deep enough to see mine.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

136. “Chance held them up to the light. “Pink?” he said as he looked through the lenses. It was not his favorite color. “Rose,” William corrected. “It’s hard to look at mortal life any other way. View it through clear lenses and it breaks your heart.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

137. “Love – real love – sees with the heart, master. Not with the eyes.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

138. “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

139. “I played a role. That is what actors do. But I played it too well. I went too far. And by the time I wanted to stop, to take a bow and leave the stage, it was too late.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

140. “Believe that you can make your way. Or don’t. Either way, you are right.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

141. “For the first time in a long time, he didn’t think of the past. And of all the things he’d lost. He thought only of the present, and what he had. And how it was so much more than he deserved. And he prayed then that he would never, ever lose it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

142. “Never is a wolf more dangerous than when he is in a cage.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

143. “Fa quod faciendum est.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

144. “Elizabeth walked through the path they’d cleared and up to the towering book. She kicked the cover with a well-shod foot. It slammed shut. Then she dipped her brush into the bucket, crossed out the word history, dipped the brush again, and wrote HER STORY in its place.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

145. “The cuts were the truth, written in blood, and no one must ever read it. Rulers were ruthless. They did not show weakness or fear. They did not cry. They made others cry. Hadn’t her stepmother told her that a thousand times?”

— Jennifer Donnelly

146. “Sir, no amount of money, no matter how vast, could induce me to stroll, perambulate, promenade, or engage in any form of locomotion with you whatsoever. Good evening.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

147. “I want to have hope, I can’t help it, but I’m almost afraid to,” Serafina.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

148. “Oh, dead man, you’re dead worng,” I tell him. “The world goes on stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can’t you see? I do not.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

149. “Her eyes drank in the colors of home – the soft gray of an arctic gull’s wing. The clear blue heart of an ice floe.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

150. “I think your vision gets better as you get older.”

— Jennifer Donnelly