The Giver

The Giver is a book about a future civilization, by Lois Lowry. The main character is a boy named Jonas. It is a strange world with different rules, thoughts, and feelings.

Warning: Spoilers ahead

Quotes

Page 1: "Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen." ~Jonas' thought
Page 5: "His feelings were too complicated this evening. He wanted to share them, but he wasn't eager to begin the process of sifting through his own complicated emotions, even with the help that he knew his parents could give." ~Jonas thinking at the dinner table at the time for sharing feelings ritual
Page 6: "I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid." ~Jonas
Page 20: "No one mentioned such things; it was not a rule, but was considered rude to call attention to things that were unsettling or different about individuals." ~Narrator
Page 27: "Better to steer clear of an occasion governed by a rule which would be so easy to break." ~Jonas thinking
Page 48: "It didn't worry him. How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made." ~Jonas thinking.
Page 52: "But today we honor your differences. They have determined your future." ~Chief Elder
Page 64: "But a the same time he was filled with fear. He did not know what his selection meant. He did not know what he was to become. Or what would become of him." ~Jonas' thoughts
Page 75: "The Old were always given the highest respect." ~Jonas reflecting
Page 78: "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." ~The Giver
Page 84: "Honor," he said firmly. "I have great honor. So will you. But you will find that that is not the same as power." ~The Giver
Page 88: "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." ~Jonas thinking
Page 97: "If everything's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!" ~Jonas
Page 98: "It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?"~The Giver
Page 110: "Jonas tried to be brave. He remembered that the Chief Elder had said he was brave." ~Narrator and Jonas' thoughts
Page 110: "They have never known pain, he thought. The realization made him feel desperately lonely." ~Jonas thinking
Page 110: "The agony of the fractured leg began to seem no more than a mild discomfort as The Giver led Jonas firmly, little by little, ino the deep and terrible suffering of the past." ~Narrator
Page 120: "Overwhelmed by pain, he lay there in the fearsome stench for hours, listened to the men and animals die, and learned what warfare meant." ~Jonas (Experience, thoughts)
Page 121: "Jonas did not want to go back. He did not want the memories, didn't want the honor, didn't want the wisdom, didn't want the pain. He wanted his childhood again, his scraped knees and ball games. He sat in his dwelling alone, watching through the window, seeing children at play, citizens bicycling home from uneventful days at work, ordinary lives free of anguish because he had been selected, as others before him had, to bear their burden. But the choice was not his. He returned each day to the Annex room." ~Jonas thinking
Page 121: "There are so many good memories," The Giver reminded Jonas." ~The Giver
Page 122: "In one ecstatic memory he had ridden a gleaming brown horse across a field that smelled of damp grass, and had dismounted beside a small stream from which both he and the horse drank cold, clear water. Now he understood about animals; and in the moment that the horse turned from the stream and nudged Jonas's shoulder affectionately with its head, he perceived the bonds between animal and human."
Page 122: "He had walked through woods, and sat at night beside a campfire. 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."
Page 128: "Things could change, Gabe," Jonas went on. "Things could be different. I don't know how, but there must be some way for things to be different." ~Jonas
Page 133: "It was a game he had often played with the other children, a game of good guys and bad guys, a harmless pasttime that used up their contained energy and ended only when they all lay posed in freakish postures on the round. He had never recognized it before as a game of war." ~Jonas thinking
Page 165: "It was not safe to spend time looking back." ~Jonas thinking