John Boyne Quotes

I've always been fascinated with what motivates people's transgressions and the scandalous journey into infamy.

You can get famous for doing something stupid and empty, but you do something stupid and empty and you're already famous, you lose your career.

The glory of my name increases my shame. Less known by mortals, I could better escape their eyes.

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

Once you become famous, you can't become unfamous. You can become a failure.

Every guilty person is his own hangman.

This haunting idea of becoming a celebrity doesn't settle well with me at all.

When you watch these reality shows, the person that is hated on the most is usually the one that gets the most shine.

There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

It's nice to be recognized, but at the same time, there are always consequences. You may get fame, but you lose anonymity. You lose a certain sense of who you are.

Any rumor you can think of, I've been a part of it.

I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way.... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself.

Now, men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin.

A man can't be taken to hell, or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam.

Dr. Calder [a Unitarian minister] said of Dr. [Samuel] Johnson on the publications of Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi, that he was like Actaeon, torn to pieces by his own pack.

If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

I made my own house be my gallows.

Hate smolders and eventually destroys, not the hated but the hater.

The man is a monster. The worst I have ever seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror. The truth? I am rotting too. I am buried alive, and already rotting. If I was not such a coward I would kill myself, but I am, and so I must content myself with killing others in the hope that one day, if I can only wade deep enough in blood, I will come out clean.

Men the most infamous are fond of fame, And those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.

I was going to get myself recognized at any price. If I could not win fame by goodness, I was ready to do it by badness.

To be known for one's saddest story is not the road to notoriety anyone would willingly choose.

By retaliating our sufferings on the heads of those we love, we get rid of a present uneasiness and incur lasting remorse. With the accomplishment of our revenge our fondness returns; so that we feel the injury we have done them, even more than they do.

There is no need for me to curse you -the murderer survives the victim only to learn that it was himself that he longed to be rid of. Hatred is self-hatred.