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.

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."

...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.

You’re my best friend, Shmuel,’ he said. ‘My best friend for life.

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.

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

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.

Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that?

I think i'm just breathing, that's all. And there's a difference between breathing and being alive.

Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.

Their lost voices must continue to be heard.

This guy was a humorless bag of nothing but.

We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection.

Architecture is art, nothing else.

He who laughs at everything is as big a fool as he who weeps at everything.

Cuts in carbon emissions would mean significantly higher electricity prices. We think the American consumer would prefer not to be skinned by Obama's EPA.

When we have an item that has value to the school and the athletic department, we cannot throw it away just to be fair.

Give the child good books, then let it alone! Don't plough and harrow its brain, or stretch it on Procrustes-beds of standardization, simplification, and what not!

Knowledge without devotion will be like a misfire.

I wanted to be an author as far back as I can remember, mixed with occasional bouts of wanting to be a werewolf when I grew up. But mostly, when I daydreamed, it was about being an author.

Many of my works fall into the category of "Zeitgeist novels." Yet I hope that they aren't only reportage, but also attempts to convey the sense of the present to the future.