The Giver Quotes

The 8 most famous lines from Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.

• “It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.”

  - The narrator. The novel's opening line — 'frightened' corrected later to 'apprehensive.'

• “For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music.”

  - The narrator. The final line — what Jonas hears at the bottom of the hill.

• “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

  - The Giver. On the job Jonas has just inherited.

• “We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.”

  - The Giver. Summing up what Sameness cost.

• “If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are forever.”

  - The Giver. The sentence that makes the escape plan possible.

• “We really have to protect people from wrong choices.”

  - Jonas's mother. The community's whole philosophy, said at dinner.

• “It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?”

  - The Giver. On why a world without choice is a world without dignity.

• “The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without color, pain, or past.”

  - The narrator. What Jonas is leaving — sameness, inventoried.

Why these lines survive

Lois Lowry’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 8 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.

Quote collectors: pair this page with the The Giver quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 3 hours and 1 minute at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like The Giver list is next.

Want the whole shelf’s lines? Our Lois Lowry books in order guide lists every book.

How to use a quotes page

Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of Lois Lowry are an invitation, not a summary.

More quote collections

1984 quotes, Animal Farm quotes, Brave New World quotes, Lord of the Flies quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.

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