Best known for his novel (for younger readers but read by all) The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne was born in Ireland on April 30th 1971. He has written 14 novels to date with 9 aimed at adults and the others including Striped Pyjamas being aimed at younger readers. Here at For Reading Addicts we love his writing and have collected together some of our favourite John Boyne Quotes from Both Sides of the Fence for you to enjoy.
“What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pyjamas and which people wore the uniforms?”
“Sitting around miserable all day won’t make you any happier.”
“We’re not supposed to be friends, you and me. We’re meant to be enemies. Did you know that?”
“Their lost voices Must continue to be heard.”
“In his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.”
“Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.”
“We don’t have the luxury of thinking … Some people make all the decisions for us.”
“There’s things that happen in a person’s life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there’s no forgetting them.”
“I don’t understand why we’re not allowed on the other side of the fence. What’s so wrong with us that we can’t go there and play?”
“. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence…”
For a book written with younger readers in mind, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas touched the lives and broke the hearts of an awful lot of adults who read it. The simplistic writing style and the innocence of Bruno combined to make the horror of The Final Solution an almost impossible thing to bear, even as a mere reader separated from its realities by both time and print.
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