The Giver

“It didn't worry him. How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.”

“But at 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.”

“His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness-and promised answers-he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?" But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true.”

“The Old were always given the highest respect.”

“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.”

“If everything's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!”

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

“My Instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works," Jonas told him eagerly. "It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it-"’ He stopped talking. He could see an odd look on The Giver’s face. "They know nothing.”

“Jonas tried to be brave. He remembered that the Chief Elder had said he was brave.”

“They have never known pain, he thought. The realization made him feel desperately lonely.”

“The agony of the fractured leg began to seem no more than a mild discomfort as The Giver led Jonas firmly, little by little, in the deep and terrible suffering of the past.”

“Overwhelmed by pain, he lay there in the fearsome stench for hours, listened to the men and animals die, and learned what warfare meant.”

“There are so many good memories, The Giver reminded Jonas.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“But now Jonas had experienced real sadness. He had felt grief. He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those.”

“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 felt a ripping sensation inside.”