Top 250 Jennifer Donnelly Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “One is not born knowing how to lead, one learns.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

102. “Sometimes it’s easier to say that you hate what you can’t have rather than admit how badly you want it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

104. “You’re playing by the Rule of Three,” said Love. “Named for the three Fates, the first of whom holds the spool upon which the thread of life is wound; the second, who pulls that thread; and the third, who snips it. If Belle eats three things in Nevermore, and leave three things, she’ll be bound to it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

105. “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

106. “What an incredible metaphor for what fear does to us – it devours our hearts. Hollows us out. Leaves us empty.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

107. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

110. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

112. “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

113. “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

114. “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

115. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

119. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

121. “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

122. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

125. “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

126. “Fa quod faciendum est.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

127. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

131. “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

132. “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

133. “Lots of things are impossible,” she said softly. “Until they’re not.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

134. “Sera was beginning to see that love wasn’t pretty words and easy promises. Love was hard. It challenged you and changed you. It filled your heart and sometimes hardened it too. Love demanded sacrifices. She’d made many over the last few weeks, and knew she would be called upon to make many more.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

135. “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

136. “The truth is usually inappropriate.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

138. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

140. “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

141. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

143. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

145. “How it grieves me to think that the world always wins... but it goes on, this world, stupid and brutal. But I do not. I do not.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

146. “Because just for a few seconds, someone else hurts, too. For just a few seconds, I’m not alone.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

147. “I was only glad to be saved and never once thought to ask why.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

148. “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

149. “I need a boy who thinks with his big head, not his little one. Since they do not exist, I have fashioned my own.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

150. “We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither. Yet how can we help them if we don’t even know about them? And how can we know about them if no one writes about them? Is it so wrong to want to know things?”

— Jennifer Donnelly