Top 200 John Boyne Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 5

151. “Naturally, I have grown to recognize some of my fellow visitors, the widows and widowers in waiting who wander the corridors in terrified loneliness, deprived for the first time in decades of their favourite person.”

— John Boyne

152. “Those pints won’t drink themselves.”

— John Boyne

153. “You are most welcome,’ replied Hitler. ‘But remember, the boy who wears this uniform must obey our rules and seek nothing more from life than the advancement of our party and our country. That is why we are here, all of us. To make Germany great again.”

— John Boyne

154. “It starts in the schoolyard, with small boys fighting among each other. In the 1930s, the Reich found a people to hate. Now, twenty years later, it’s us who are hunted down. When they discover one of us, they bring us to a courtroom so the world can hear of our crimes but, really, all they want is to shoot us, hang us, kill us in any way they can. We’re all just trying to survive.”

— John Boyne

155. “What I would not have given to be that young at this time and to be able to experience such unashamed honesty.”

— John Boyne

156. “A man was standing at the end of the hallway, just outside an open door, from where a great light shone, illuminating him almost as a god.”

— John Boyne

157. “I sat down again, wishing I had never been brought here. It was as if I had walked onstage into the middle of a dramatic play, where the other characters are already engaged in a battle that has been going on for some years but which only now, upon my arrival, is allowed to reach a climax.”

— John Boyne

158. “Maude’s way of dealing with Charles was to treat him like an ottoman, of no use to anyone but worth having around.”

— John Boyne

159. “The novel was written by Anshel Bronstein, the boy who had lived in the flat below him as a child. Of course, he remembered, he had wanted to be a writer. It seemed that his ambition had come true.”

— John Boyne

160. “What are you playing?” I asked him. “War.” “Is that a game?” “It’s the best game in the world.” “And are you winning?” “I won’t know till it’s over.” “And perhaps not even then.”

— John Boyne

161. “Well, I’m not advocating it,” I said. “I just mean that before we learn to feel afraid of things, our bodies know how to do them anyway. It’s one of the more disappointing aspects of growing older. We fear more so we can do less.”

— John Boyne

162. “Honestly, Ignac, I look back at my life and I don’t understand very much of it. It seems like it would have been so simple now to have been honest with everyone, especially Julian.”

— John Boyne

163. “We hadden de Furie nooit te eten moeten vragen,′ zei ze. ‘Sommige mensen moeten zo nodig hogerop komen.”

— John Boyne

164. “I suppose you wish you’d won the war.” I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Mr. Darcy-Witt,” I said, as if I were explaining something obvious to a child. “No one wins a war.”

— John Boyne

165. “You know, some day, when you’re all older,’ he said, looking around the room, ’you’re going to have troubles of your own and you’ll have friends who are going through tough times. Maybe it’ll even be one of your own children. And when that happens, you’ll look back at the way you’re all behaving now and wonder whether you might not have been able to show a little more kindness.”

— John Boyne

166. “By doing nothing, you did everything. By taking no responsibility, you bear all responsibility.”

— John Boyne

167. “I’ve known violence, I’ve known bigotry. I’ve known shame and I’ve known love. And somehow, I always survive.”

— John Boyne

168. “Heil Hitler,′ zei hij, wat, voor zover hij wist, een andere manier was om te zeggen ‘Tot ziens en een prettige dag verder’.”

— John Boyne

169. “It takes all sorts to make a world.”

— John Boyne

170. “It’s no longer a fiction, Gretel. Tell a story often enough and it becomes the truth.”

— John Boyne

171. “This is a Bible, you blasphemous cretin,” he said, his face now growing even redder than before. “This is the word of the Lord.” “If you say so,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “He only had one book in him, though, didn’t he? Couldn’t write another?”

— John Boyne

172. “Tell a story often enough and it becomes the truth.”

— John Boyne

173. “They looked at each other in absolute horror, as if they knew that they couldn’t possibly control the chain of events set in place by that simple, inevitable meeting. The lives they had lived until that moment had come to an end. And then it didn’t matter what happened next, their destinies were already decided.”

— John Boyne

174. “There are days when I rather detest living in the year 1867. Everything moves so quickly. Change is happening at such a pace. I preferred the way of life thirty years ago when I was a boy.”

— John Boyne

175. “My twin contradictory places of idleness: the public bar and the chapel. One so social and teeming with life, the other quiet and warning of death.”

— John Boyne

176. “You heard it all. You saw it all. You knew it all. And you also know the things you are responsible for.’ She hesitated, but it needed to be said. ‘The deaths you have on your conscience. But you’re a young man still, you’re only sixteen; you have many years ahead of you to come to terms with your complicity in these matters. Just don’t ever tell yourself that you didn’t know.’ She released him now from her grip. ‘That would be the worst crime of all.”

— John Boyne

177. “I stared at him and felt the tears forming in my eyes. “Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” I asked him. “It’s been almost thirty years. I shouldn’t have had to spend all that time on my own.”

— John Boyne

178. “Standing there in your uniform,’ she continued, ’as if it makes you something special. Not even caring what it means really. What it stands for.”

— John Boyne

179. “I blame Steve Jobs. And that Zuckerberg fellow. All those clever little psychopaths who couldn’t get laid in high school but make up for their sexual inadequacy by inventing technology that destroys humanity. They’re the Oppenheimers of the twenty-first century.”

— John Boyne

180. “I’m educating strangers on how they can live better lives. And making sure that those with the wrong opinions are held to account.”

— John Boyne

181. “You were cruel.’ ‘I was obedient.”

— John Boyne

182. “I’m seven,’ said Pierrot, sitting up straight, mortally offended.”

— John Boyne

183. “I’ve always considered myself to be the sturdy type. You know, the sort who can put up with any unpleasant situation if I have to.”

— John Boyne

184. “You were a terrible monster of a man and wherever you are you should feel shame for the way you lived your life.”

— John Boyne

185. “Nothing disappears. Nothing is forgotten. Everything we say or do these days clings to us for ever.”

— John Boyne

186. “Remember, my young friend, life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practise.’ He winked at me. ‘Forster.”

— John Boyne

187. “And they would surely find some way of suggesting that you were as guilty as any of us. No matter how young you were.”

— John Boyne

188. “Tomorrow, I will wake up and begin again.”

— John Boyne

189. “Waarom zou vader op zo’n nare plek willen werken met al die buren? Het slaat nergens op.”

— John Boyne

190. “Is it too much to ask for decent transportation during one’s lifetime?”

— John Boyne

191. “He lifted his pint and took a long gulp and I watched his face grimace a little as he tried to swallow. His eyes closed briefly as he fought the urge to spit it back up. ‘Christ, that tastes good,’ he said with all the credibility of a Parisian complimenting a meal in Central London. ‘I needed that.”

— John Boyne

192. “Really, it seemed that the safest thing was not to speak. In which case, perhaps the world had not changed very much at all.”

— John Boyne

193. “I sometimes feel as if I wasn’t supposed to live among people at all. As if I would be happier on a little island somewhere, all alone with my books and some writing material for company. I could grow my own food and never have to speak to a soul.”

— John Boyne

194. “But you have to appreciate that we’re not talking about normal people here. We’re talking about people on Twitter.”

— John Boyne

195. “That was guilt.”

— John Boyne

196. “Why couldn’t Ireland have been like this when I was a boy?”

— John Boyne

197. “The powers that be, the Great Unelected Consciences of the World, didn’t approve of what she said and that was the end of her.”

— John Boyne

198. “And anyway, they lost, didn’t they? By a landslide. Their day is over. They’re the past. They’re history. Just a bunch of bigots screaming into the void, desperate to have their voices heard. They were always going to lose. And you know what? The world didn’t fall off its axis when it happened.”

— John Boyne

199. “But then I didn’t know what I was giving up until it was already gone. No one ever does, do they?”

— John Boyne

200. “On the day that Max showed up, I hadn’t spoken to a single person in eight days. I’d kept note of it in a diary. I hadn’t raised my hand in class, hadn’t said a word to anyone in school, had eaten my meals in perfect silence, which was how Maude preferred it anyway, and generally hid away in my bedroom, wondering what was wrong with me, for even at that tender age I know that there was something about me that was different and that would be impossible ever to put right.”

— John Boyne