Top 250 Jennifer Donnelly Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Who needs make-believe monsters when there are so many real ones.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

153. “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

154. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

156. “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

157. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

160. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

162. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

168. “Call a girl pretty once, and all she wants, forevermore, is to hear it again.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

169. “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

170. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

172. “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

173. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

176. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

178. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

180. “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

181. “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

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

187. “Whatever you do or dream you can do – begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

188. “It’s all about the pain, isn’t it?”

— Jennifer Donnelly

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

— Jennifer Donnelly

190. “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

191. “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

192. “No sunrises that stop you dead with their unspeakable beuaty, either, he thought. No whales breaching only yards away from the ship, showering your awestruck self with a cold ocean rain. No songs and whiskey belowdecks at night while the wind plucks at the ship’s rigging and the ice beats against her hull.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

193. “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

194. “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

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