Quote

What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?

John Boyne

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John Boyne
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: April 30
Novelist
Writer
Dublin city
Decided
Difference
Differences
Striped
People
Pajamas
Wore
Uniforms
Wondered
Exactly

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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.
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You’re my best friend, Shmuel,’ he said. ‘My best friend for life.
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I am frustrated by celebrities who decide to write children's books because they think it's easy. That drives me crazy. It's frustrating because it's unfair to children. Because they'll get a lot of attention, they'll get a lot of marketing budget and so on just because they're a celebrity - the Madonnas, the Ricky Gervaises, the Russell Brands.
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Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away. As a writer, my interest has become in writing about much more emotional, personal topics. I'm trying to reach into subjects I have never written about before.
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I enjoy the research element. There are so many stories from the past that interest me, that I want to learn more about, just as an interested person. And if I'm going to learn, if I'm going to research, it's probably going to lead me to writing a novel.
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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.
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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.
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The people I see from my window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same.' 'Ah, those people,' said Father, nodding his head and smiling slightly. 'Those people...well, they're not people at all, Bruno.' Bruno frowned. 'They're not?' he asked, unsure what Father meant by that.
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It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.
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With the adult ones, I feel I need to get as deep inside the psychology of a character as I can, and that needs to be first-person. In the children's books, I feel I need some distance. I don't want to be the nine-year-old at the center of the story. I need to have some type of narrative voice.
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The dot that became a speck that became a blob that became a figure that became a boy
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He suddenly became convinced that if he didn’t do something sensible, something to put his mind to some use, then before he knew it he would be wondering round the streets having fights with himself and inviting domestic animals to social occasions too.
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. . .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.
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War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.
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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.
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I hope for so much from every book I read. And time and again, I find myself disappointed. I look across my bookshelves and see hundreds of titles which in my memory seem merely mediocre or second-rate. Only occasionally does a novel appear for which I feel a lasting passion, a book that I think could in time become a classic.
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Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that?
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Today people can see and protest all the different interests that want war to happen, the people it financially benefits. The First World War wasn't fought for that reason. The Second World War wasn't fought for that reason. Your entire country and way of life could be overtaken.
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It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.
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Bruno: Why do you wear pajamas all day? Shmuel: The soldiers. They took all our clothes away. Bruno: My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away.
John Boyne