Top 250 Jennifer Donnelly Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Why do you write?′ Because I love words and stories so much. Because I would be grief stricken every day of my life if I couldn’t write. Because I’m obsessed and compelled. Because I’d be utterly useless at anything else.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

202. “Mirror, mirror on the wall... who will bring about my fall?”

— Jennifer Donnelly

203. “There was a basket at her feet. She reached into it and lifted out the head of a young woman, a marquise. She wore Bourbon white to her death, but wears the tricolor now – white cheeks, blue lips, red dripping from her neck. Long live the revolution.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

204. “Headstrong is just a word, Katie – a word others call you when you don’t do what they want.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

205. “Lots of things are true. Doesn’t mean you have to go around saying them.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

206. “Even the strong couldn’t be strong all the time.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

207. “Her grief would run its course, like a fever, and release her when it was spent. He would not shush her or tell her it was God’s will and that her da was better off. That was rubbish and they both knew it. When something hurt as bad as this, you had to let it hurt. There were no shortcuts. p. 100-101.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

208. “She was sorry for all the grim-tale girls locked in lonely towers. Trapped in sugar houses. Lost in the dark woods, with a huntsman coming to cut out their hearts.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

209. “Difficulties are things that show people what they are.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

210. “Most people, if they were generous, were so because they thought life was short and that one must make the most of it. Sid Baxter was generous because he knew that life was long. It went on and on even when you had no use for it anymore. It was happiness, not life, that was short, and when it visited – in the form of a fine evening spent talking with a friend – he honoured it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

211. “Her fear was strong, but her need for the truth was stronger.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

212. “Ghosts are not the dead, come back from the grave to torment the living; ghosts are already here. They live inside us, keening in the ashes of our sorrows, mired in the thick, clutching mud of our regrets.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

213. “One expects decent people to stand up for the good of all. Decent people shut their doors and hide behind them as decent people do. Massacres could never happen if it weren’t for decent people.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

214. “The women stood there, nodding and pointing and making remarks, basting themselves in righteousness like geese on a spit, when just yesterday the first had slapped her small daughter so hard for spilling milk that the child’s cheek still bore a welt, and the second had kissed her sister’s husband behind the tavern.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

215. “Sometimes the things that make us all wrong is the thing that make us perfect.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

216. “But here, surrounded by friends who wanted her, she recognized for the first time that there was only one voice that truly mattered. Only one she had to listen to. Her own.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

217. “Home’s all the people, all the places, and all the things that you love. You carry it wherever you go.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

218. “But then again, it’s easy to love those who’ve done right by us, don’t you think? A bit harder to love those who’ve done us wrong.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

219. “His suffering will teach him kindness and compassion. He’ll find his heart again.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

220. “For the rich boys who get to go to the Sorbonne even though they’re too stupid to solve a simple quadratic equation? For the viscount I was seated next to at a dinner who tried to put his hand up my skirt through all five courses? For the smug society ladies who look me up and down and purse their lips and say no, I won’t do for their sons because my chin is too pointed, my nose is too large, I talk too much about numbers?”

— Jennifer Donnelly

221. “Why is it, she wondered now, that boys get to do things and be things and girls only get to watch?”

— Jennifer Donnelly

222. “Voice, according to Miss Wilcox, is not just the sound that comes from your throat but the feeling that comes from your words.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

223. “She alone knew that one must meet the world’s madness with more madness.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

224. “Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths... The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he’s been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that... But the second kind, they show you life more like it is... The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

225. “A powerful king has taken my heart, she thought. But a penniless boy has stolen it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

226. “I’m safer with the Tailor and Pretty Will and every thief and cutthroat in the bend than I am with Miss Josephine Montfort of Gramecy Park.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

227. “There is magic in this sad, hard world. A magic stronger than fate, stronger than chance. And it is seen in the unlikeliest of places... It is the magic of a frail and falliable creature, one capable of both unspeakable cruelty and immense kindness. It lives inside every human being ready to redeem us. To transform us. To save us. If we can only find the courage to listen to it. It is the magic of the human heart.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

228. “It was a trick. It was this place, all the memories. His longing heart and the darkness conspiring. But his eyes told him it was no trick. He jumped down off the steps and walked toward her. Hoping. Fearing. He’d done this before. So many times. Caught sight of a slender black-haired woman and impulsively called to her, only to have her turn and gaze at him with eyes that were questioning, coldly polite, and never, ever hers.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

229. “There is an advantage to be found in most everything that happens to you, even if it is not immediately apparent.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

230. “And that lesson was perfectly clear: There is nothing more dangerous than kindness.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

231. “That was what people did when they wanted to stop a girl from doing something – they shamed her.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

232. “Kindness is many things,” he said. “It is gentle. Tender. Tolerant. It is born of patience and faith. And sometimes, yes, it’s dangerous. Helping a wounded animal that’s likely to lash out, standing up for someone who’s being taunted by bullies... these things are all dangerous. But to try to understand another creature, to put ourselves in their place, to help them – even when it costs us – that shows strength, Sophie, not weakness.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

233. “The truth is usually inappropriate,” Caroline said. “That’s why we avoid speaking of it.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

234. “Wounds can heal if you pull the thorns out.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

235. “Death wounds only is you let her.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

236. “Cowardice is like a plague; it spreads. One sick individual can infect an entire population.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

237. “Nothing scares a weak man more than a strong woman.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

238. “It does not look good. Then again, few things do in the dead of night. The small dark hours are the undoing of many. Candlelight throws shadows on the walls of our souls, shadows that turn a mouse into a monster, a downturn into disaster.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

239. “Only fools rush Death,′ said Death.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

240. “She was fearsome. She was strong. She was beautiful.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

241. “Didn’t Adelaide see what she was doing? Didn’t she understand that her brutal actions carried terrible consequences for her people? She was so vigilant, so worried about threats from her enemies. She raised armies, built warships – all to keep her people.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

242. “But power is a treacherous thing; it’s bite is sweet, its kiss can sting and unless I’m much mistaken, it’s never given, always taken.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

243. “One cannot find that which never existed!”

— Jennifer Donnelly

244. “We must not run from our unhappiness. We must listen to it. It has much to tell us.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

245. “If the countess was Death, then Death was a cheat.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

246. “You have no idea how the story ends. You’re not its author.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

247. “And so the world reduces us, all three of us, to our lowest common denominator.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

248. “Because he deserves a second chance,” Love said. “Everyone does. My enchantress transformed the outer man to transform the inner. His suffering will teach him kindness and compassion. He’ll find his heart again.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

249. “You’re the worst girl I’ve ever met Isabelle,” Hugo added, with touching sincerity. “ You’re so tough and stubborn, you give me nightmares.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

250. “Watch a child die for the lack of a few coins. Do that, and you might start to understand a few things, like the difference between a theft and a crime.”

— Jennifer Donnelly