Top 200 Lois Lowry Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Two children – one male, one female – to each family unit. It was written very clearly in the rules.”

— Lois Lowry

52. “Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world.”

— Lois Lowry

53. “It is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything.”

— Lois Lowry

54. “You may lie.”

— Lois Lowry

55. “The God of Thunder has fallen into the milk pail!”

— Lois Lowry

56. “Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with difference. We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.”

— Lois Lowry

57. “The writer after all is only half the book, the other half is the reader.”

— Lois Lowry

58. “Oh the weather outside is frightful...”

— Lois Lowry

59. “It was an illusion. It was a tangled knot of fears and deceits and dark struggles for power that had disguised itself and almost destroyed everything. Now it was unfolding, like a flower coming into bloom, radiant with possibility.”

— Lois Lowry

60. “I left home at the correct time but when I was riding along near the hatchery, the crew was separating some salmon, I guess I just got distraught, watching them.”

— Lois Lowry

61. “He was free to enjoy the breathless glee that overwhelmed him: the speed, the clear cold air, the total silence, the feeling of balance and excitement and peace.”

— Lois Lowry

62. “He hunched his shoulders and tried to make himself smaller in the seat. He wanted to disappear, to fade away, not to exist.”

— Lois Lowry

63. “But they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable-so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen.”

— Lois Lowry

64. “Most of the people on the night crew had not even been given spouses because they lacked, somehow, the essential capacity to connect to others, which was required for the creation of a family unit.”

— Lois Lowry

65. “Teasing’s part of the fun that comes before kissing.”

— Lois Lowry

66. “Back and back and back.” Jonas repeated the familiar phrase. Sometimes it had seemed humorous to him. Sometimes it had seemed meaningful and important. Now it was ominous. It meant, he knew, that nothing could be changed.”

— Lois Lowry

67. “There could be love,” Jonas whispered.”

— Lois Lowry

68. “There’s much more. There’s all that goes beyond – all that is Elsewhere – and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those, when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future.” He rested for a moment, breathing deeply. “I am so weighted with them,” he said.”

— Lois Lowry

69. “A book, to me, is almost sacrosanct: such an individual and private thing. The reader brings his or her own history and beliefs and concerns, and reads in solitude, creating each scene from his own imagination as he does.”

— Lois Lowry

70. “Now, seeing the newchild and its expression, he was reminded that the light eyes were not only a rarity but gave the one who had them a certain look – what was it? Depth, he decided; as if one were looking into the clear water of the river, down to the bottom, where things might lurk which hadn’t been discovered yet.”

— Lois Lowry

71. “And it was lonely, to yearn, all alone.”

— Lois Lowry

72. “It’s just that... without the memories it’s all meaningless.”

— Lois Lowry

73. “I am the Fiercest of the Fierce.”

— Lois Lowry

74. “That’s why they call you Seer. You see more than most.”

— Lois Lowry

75. “We’re the ones who will fill in the blank places. Maybe we can make it different.”

— Lois Lowry

76. “All of his strength and blood and breath were entering the earth now. His brain and spirit became part of the earth. He rose. He floated above, weightless, watching his human self labor and writhe. He gave himself to it willingly, traded himself for all that he loved and valued, and felt free.”

— Lois Lowry

77. “It’s hard to leave the only place you’ve known.”

— Lois Lowry

78. “This new Caleb was a replacement child. The couple had lost their first Caleb, a cheerful little Four.”

— Lois Lowry

79. “NEFARIOUS means utterly, completely wicked. The character in The Wizard of Oz could have been called the Nefarious Witch of the West but authors like to use the same beginning consonant, often. Perhaps L. Frank Baum crossed out nefarious after wicked came to his mind. Thank goodness, because Nefarious would be a terrible name for a musical.”

— Lois Lowry

80. “I don’t set out to transmit a message. I don’t write with a political point of view. There are no religious overtones. Looking back at my books, I can say, ‘Oh, yes, it is there.’ But it’s not in my mind when I write.”

— Lois Lowry

81. “Its a little like looking at yourself looking in a mirror looking at yourself looking in a mirror.”

— Lois Lowry

82. “Suddenly he was aware with certainty and joy that below, ahead, they were waiting for him; and that they were waiting, too, for the baby.”

— Lois Lowry

83. “The exemption from rudeness startled him. Reading it again, however, he realized that it didn’t compel him to be rude; it simply allowed him the option.”

— Lois Lowry

84. “The God of Thunder has.”

— Lois Lowry

85. “People do things that turn out badly, often for the most benevolent of reasons.”

— Lois Lowry

86. “Pretending doesn’t keep you safe.”

— Lois Lowry

87. “But somehow the small red-painted sled had become a symbol of courage and hope.”

— Lois Lowry

88. “When would he ever learn to stop saying “Look” to a man who had no eyes?”

— Lois Lowry

89. “My work will be finished when I have helped the community to change and become whole.”

— Lois Lowry

90. “She felt a small shudder of fear. Fear was always a part of life for the people. Because of fear, they made shelter and found food and grew things. For the same reason, weapons were stored, waiting. There was fear of cold, of sickness and hunger. There was fear of beasts.”

— Lois Lowry

91. “In the Fen, iffen they give you something special, it be a kick in your buttie.”

— Lois Lowry

92. “We live in times that are in many ways ambiguous. Maybe that’s why kids want precision in what they read – they don’t like that moral ambiguity.”

— Lois Lowry

93. “Alys told her that it was the way of women, to tote a newborn and then adjust as it grew until by the time the child was plump and heavy, the weight seemed naught.”

— Lois Lowry

94. “Sometimes we have to hurt people, in order to keep ourselves whole. We must just do it with love, that’s all.”

— Lois Lowry

95. “It was my journey and i had to do it without help. I had to find my own strengths, face my own fears.”

— Lois Lowry

96. “The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel.”

— Lois Lowry

97. “Although he had through the memories learned about the pain of loss and loneliness, now he gained too, an understanding of solitude and its joy.”

— Lois Lowry

98. “He was left, upon awakening, with the feeling that he wanted, even somehow needed, to reach the something that waited in the distance. The feeling that it was good. That it was welcoming. That it was significant. But he did not know how to get there.”

— Lois Lowry

99. “Now he saw another elephant emerge from the place where it had stood hidden in the trees. Very slowly it walked to the mutilated body and looked down. With its sinuous trunk it struck the huge corpse; then it reached up, broke some leafy branches with a snap, and draped them over the mass of torn thick flesh. Finally it tilted its massive head, raised its trunk, and roared into the empty landscape.”

— Lois Lowry

100. “Be one of many. Be sure that they never have reason to remember your face.”

— Lois Lowry