John Boyne
John Boyne
John Boyneis an Irish novelist. He is the author of nine novels for adults and five novels for younger readers. His novels are published in 50 languages...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 April 1971
CountryIreland
trying world breathe
There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you? It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.
unknown-worlds finding-happiness knows
It is possible, you know, to drift off to an unknown world and find happiness there. Maybe even more happiness than you've ever known before.
children boys stairs
He looked the boy up and down as if he had never seen a child before and wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do with one: eat it, ignore it or kick it down the stairs.
boys dots figures
The dot that became a speck that became a blob that became a figure that became a boy
dream night silence
The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. This was nothing like the kind of quiet he heard when he woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. When that happened, there were always strange, unidentifiable sounds seeping into his room from the tiny gaps where the windowpanes weren't sealed together correctly. At those moments he could always tell there was life outside, even if all that life was fast asleep. It was a silence that wasn't silence at all.
brother speak moments
But still there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.
trying way sides
. . .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, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.
children book writing
I think that books for young people should have serious and important themes, they shouldn't be trivial. So the books I write, they would be the kind of stories you would write in an adult novel only they just happen to feature a child at the center of them.
boat ask-me wells
Well you've been brought here against your will, just like I have. If you ask me, we're all in the same boat. And it's leaking.
heart reason manners
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.
character hands my-best-friend
He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel's tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly. "You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life.
children book independent
I was a very quiet child, quite introverted, really. Independent, yes; I didn't need a lot of supervision. Less so than I did when I got older, maybe. But I was a bookish child, not surprisingly. I could sit quite happily in a corner for hours and entertain myself with books.
pajamas sitting miserable
Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.
mean normal ust
(J)ust because your version of normal isn't the same as someone else's version doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.