Lois Lowry

Do you know that I no longer see colors?"Jonas's heart broke.

Gabe?"The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him. "There could be love", Jonas whispered.

Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories.

And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.

Why do you and I have to hold these memories?''It gives us wisdom.

It's just that...without the memories, it's all meaningless.

Things could change Gabe. Things could be different. I don't know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colors. And grandparents. And everybody would have memories. You know about memories...Gabe, there could be love.

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. There could be colors. And grandparents," he added, staring through the dimness toward the ceiling of his sleepingroom. "And everybody would have the memories.""You know the memories," he whispered, turning toward the crib.Garbriel's breathing was even and deep. Jonas liked having him there, though he felt guilty about the secret. Each night he gave memories to Gabriel: memories of boat rides and picnics in the sun; memories of soft rainfall against windowpanes; memories of dancing barefoot on a damp lawn."Gabe?"The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him."There could be love," Jonas whispered.

It's a funny thing about names, how they become a part of someone.

It was because someone who was a real friend was having the exact same feelings I was having, about something that was more important to me than anything else. I bet there are people who go through a whole life and never experience that.

It wasn't the same. I'm pretty good at making the best of things, but it wasn't the same.

Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. Once, when he had been a Four, he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, ____ starving._ Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision. He was not starving, it was pointed out. He was hungry. No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving. To say __tarving_ was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And he had.