Top 250 Jennifer Donnelly Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Lots of things are impossible,” she said softly. “Until they’re not.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

155. “The truth is usually inappropriate.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

156. “I am my head and my heart, all that I know, all that I love, everything I hope for. I am the blue waters of the Rhine, sparkling in the sun.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

157. “I love you, too... I won’t ever leave you again. I promise. I kept that promise. For love him I did. For nearly two years I spent almost every waking hour with him. Until he was taken from me. But I never left him. And I never will.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

158. “You gave those people hope, girl, and that’s a dangerous thing. There’s no greater weapon in the whole world than hope. It’s dangerous because it’s powerful.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

159. “I could solve all the Diophantine equations, extend Newton’s work on infinite series, complete Euler’s analysis of prime numbers, and it wouldn’t matter.” She looked at Isabelle. “Ella is the beauty. You and I are the ugly stepsisters. And so the world reduces us, all three of us, to our lowest common denominator.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

160. “Life, Rose well knew, could throw some hard punches at you, but nothing hurt as much as losing a child, or seeing one of your children hurt and suffering. Becoming a parent changed you forever, as nothing else could. Not good or bad fortune. Not friendships. Not even a man or a woman.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

161. “Who knew that listening to a guy sleep could be so much deeper than sleeping with a guy.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

162. “But you are a different sort of girl. Not at all what I expected you to be. And this is a different sort of time. And so I am hopeful for all the things you may yet find.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

163. “Revolutions come about when small things happen to small people.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

164. “No. I meant stay with me today. And tomorrow. And every day after.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

165. “I grew up on a mixed diet of mass and class, and I still read that way. I hate it when people apologize for what they read. Some bestsellers aren’t exactly literary. So what? They’re fun and rip-roaring, Who instituted the book police and why do we have to answer them? Grrrrr!”

— Jennifer Donnelly

166. “That’s not the question, Isabelle,” he said softly. “The question is, why do you believe them?”

— Jennifer Donnelly

167. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

170. “Why do you always want to read about other people’s lives, Matt? Ain’t your own good enough for you.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

171. “Who needs make-believe monsters when there are so many real ones.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

172. “But what if you don’t like your own story. What then?”

— Jennifer Donnelly

173. “Jealousy. It burns so hot, so bright. It devours you until you’re just a smoking ruin with nothing left inside. Nothing but ashes.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

174. “I’M SO GLAD you’re not dumb, Yaz,” Neela said. Yazeed shot her a sidelong glace. “I thought you were going to say dead.” “That, too.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

175. “Murder is not a suitable topic of conversation for a young lady.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

176. “I’ve been in contact with her. She approached me months ago. I know the terms of her deal. She’s going to tell Ragnar that Ondalina’s attack on Miromara was an act of war and that he must surrender. Either he accepts Lucia.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

177. “Mortals aren’t born strong, they become strong.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

178. “Ambition and poverty are powerful motivators...”

— Jennifer Donnelly

179. “You’d live happily ever after. On nothing but love and pastries.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

180. “The guitar’s still around me. I slip it off and put it down. I want to feel him. To feel his breath on my neck. The warmth of his skin. To feel something other than sadness. Hold me, I tell him silently. Hold me here. To this place. This life. Make me want you. Want this. Want something. Please.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

181. “Isn’t that what a good story does? It pulls you in and never lets you go.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

182. “May Delano looked up from her book. “What’s a wayward girl?” she asked. Jo groaned. “Never mind,” Trudy said. “Tell me,” May whined. “Very well,” Trudy replied, turning to look at May. “A girl who is with child but without a husband.” May laughed. “Shows what you know, Trudy Van Eyck. The stork brings babies after you’re married, not before.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

183. “When you can write music that endures, bravo. Until then, keep quiet and study the work of those who can.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

184. “Go now, girl. Remake the world.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

185. “My choice”, he’d whispered, taking her hand. “Mine. Not theirs.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

186. “As a child, she’d thought all the noise and commotion was the most wild, wonderful game, but as she’d grown older, she understood why everyone rushed around so: they were chasing a story.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

187. “He was a flame and she’d gotten burned, and the pain was terrible, yet it didn’t make the fire any less alluring.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

188. “The stomach is easily satisfied. It’s the hunger in our hearts that kills us.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

189. “I struggled for a long time to get anything published.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

190. “Very. I ground the lenses myself. The left gives you hindsight; the right, foresight.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

191. “Thousands of musical voices, like rain on water, beckoned.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

192. “I’m always doing things I can’t do. Otherwise, I’d never get to do them.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

193. “His arms around her felt like nothing she’d ever known and everything she’d ever wanted.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

194. “An escape can become escapism before we even know it. Books are wonderful things, but you can’t live in someone else’s story. You have to live your own story.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

195. “You fear you will fail at the very thing you were born for. And your fear torments you... instead of shunning your fear, you must let it speak and listen carefully to what it’s trying to tell you. It will give you good counsel.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

196. “I’m not crazy; I’m curious.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

197. “I was born in Paris. My parents came here from Tunisia when they were kids, but we’re still foreigners. Arabs. Africans. Rabble. Scum. We’re what’s wrong with this country and we always will be.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

198. “She might be a captive, but in this room, with a book in her hand, she could be free.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

199. “The thing is, you can’t ever really know how rotten someone will turn out to be.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

200. “I take a seat high above the BQE, stare at Manhatten for a bit, and then I play. For hours. I play until my fingertips are raw. Until I rip a nail and bleed on the strings. Until my hands hurt so bad I forget my heart does.”

— Jennifer Donnelly