The Graveyard Book: Quotations and Explanations
1. âYou're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it.â (Ch. 8)
2. âFace your life, its pain, its pleasure,â (Ch. 8)
3. âThe tongue is the most remarkable. For we use it both to taste out sweet wine and bitter poison, thus also do we utter words both sweet and sour with the same tongue.â (Ch. 7)
4. âIn the graveyard, no one ever changed. The little children Bod had played with when he was small were still children; Fortinbras Bartleby, who had once been his best friend, was not four or five years younger than Bod was, and they had less to talk about each time they saw each other; Thackeray Porringer was Bodâs height and age, and seemed to be in much better temper with him;...â (Ch. 7)
I thought this quotation related to Peter Pan, specifically the Lost Boys and Neverland, in that these younger children were never going to grow up. Yes, they are dead, but they also keep their youth, unlike Bod, who has to grow up. Bod is like Wendy, who leaves Neverland, returns to her home and becomes an adult. Bod also has to eventually leave the Graveyard, and he loses the sense of magic he had while he was there.
5. âYou're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.â (Ch. 6)
Silas is teaching Bod that he still has a life to live rather than being dead in the graveyard with all the other ghosts. Unlike everyone else, he can still go out and live, with the potential to change the world or live out his dreams. Up until this moment, Bod didnât realize how different he was from the others in the graveyard, but this pivotal scene makes him realize he wants to leave the graveyard and attend school, so that one day he can get revenge on the man who killed his family.
6. âFear is contagious. You can catch it.â (Ch. 6)
I canât help but think of the current pandemic, and how everyone has reacted to it. When the media (or another entity) announces the possibility that something could happen, everyone rushes to panic mode. This is the fear that grows and causes catastrophe.
7. ââAnd there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.'
'They kill themselves, you mean?' said Bod. [...]
'Does it work? Are they happier dead?'
'Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.ââ (Ch. 4)
I think this is an interesting way to look at mental illness and suicide, or even the concept of escaping oneâs existence. If there is an afterlife, as this book suggests, then this passage explains there was no point in taking oneâs life, because the unhappiness wonât end. It reminds me of when people advise me I can only find happiness inside myself, and not in a place, thing or person. If you canât be happy with yourself, youâll never be happy. And based on this passage, apparently this is the case even in the afterlife.
8. âOne grave in every graveyard belongs to the graveyard ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find itâwaterstained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read.â (Ch. 6)
9. âIt is neither fair nor unfair, Nobody Owens. It simply is.â (Ch. 3)
10. âFEAR IS THE WEAPON OF THE SLEER.â (Ch. 2)
Fear is the weapon of any entity that attempts control: a dictator, a bully, a dystopian government. It isnât any different in this book, when Bod goes under the gravesite and into the hillside. He has to overcome his fear in order to defeat the Sleer and to eventually become the master of the Sleer. This is a lesson for us all: to not give in to fear.