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Anthony Doerr QUOTES

Anthony Doerr QUOTES

61 " and Werner sees six-year-old Jutta lean toward him, Frau Elena kneading bread in the background, a crystal radio in his lap, the cords of his soul not yet severed. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

62 " Werner and his younger sister, Jutta, are raised at Children's House, a clinker-brick two-story orphanage on Viktoriastrasse whose rooms are populated with the coughs of sick children and the crying of newborns and battered trunks inside which drowse the last possessions of deceased parents: patchwork dresses, tarnished wedding cutlery, faded ambrotypes of fathers swallowed by the mines. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

63 " Marie-Laure will indeed smell something, whether because her uncle is passing coffee grounds beneath her nose, or because they really are flying over the coffee trees of Boreno, she does not want to decide (151). "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

64 " You know how diamonds—how all crystals—grow, Laurette? By adding microscopic layers, a few thousand atoms every month, each atop the next. Millennia after millennia. That’s how stories accumulate too. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

65 " If only she had begged him to stay. Now everything in the house scares her: the creaking stairs, shuttered windows, empty rooms. The clutter and silence. Etienne tries performing silly experiments to cheer her: a vinegar volcano, a tornado in a bottle. “Can you hear it, Marie? Spinning in there?” She does not feign interest. Madame Manec brings her omelets, cassoulet, brochettes of fish, fabricating miracles out of ration tickets and the dregs of her cupboards, but Marie-Laure refuses to eat. “Like a snail,” she overhears Etienne say outside her door. “Curled up so tight in there. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

66 " She reaches for his hand, sets something in his palm, and squeezes his hand into a fist. “Goodbye, Werner.” “Goodbye, Marie-Laure. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

67 " Lord Our God Your Grace is a purifying fire. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

68 " Five boys later, it is Frederick’s turn. Frederick, who clearly cannot see well without his glasses. Who has not been cheering when each bucketful of water finds its mark. Who is frowning at the prisoner as though he recognizes something there. And Werner knows what Frederick is going to do. Frederick has to be nudged forward by the boy behind him. The upperclassman hands him a bucket and Frederick pours it out on the ground. Bastian steps forward. His face flares scarlet in the cold. “Give him another.” Again Frederick sloshes it onto the ice at his feet. He says in a small voice, “He is already finished, sir.” The upperclassman hands over a third pail. “Throw it,” commands Bastian. The night steams, the stars burn, the prisoner sways, the boys watch, the commandant tilts his head. Frederick pours the water onto the ground. “I will not. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

69 " But he didn’t have language for what he really wanted to say; he couldn’t explain how her wildness that day, on the road, had thrilled him as much as it terrified him. "

― Anthony Doerr , The Shell Collector

70 " Maybe living was no more than getting swept over a riverbed and eventually out to sea, no choices to make, only the vast, formless ocean ahead, the frothing waves, the lightless tomb of its depths. "

― Anthony Doerr , The Shell Collector

71 " She wants very badly for her father to say, Yes, that’s it absolutely, ma chérie, but he says nothing. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

72 " Tucked between the last two pages, she finds an old sealed envelope. He has written For Frederick across the front. Frederick: the bunkmate Werner used to write about, the boy who loved birds. He sees what other people don’t. What the war did to dreamers. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

73 " sheets of yellow flowers glow in the fields, and Jutta wonders if any of them grow over the bones of her brother. Before dark, a well-dressed man with a prosthetic leg boards the train. He sits beside her and lights a cigarette. Jutta clutches her bag between her knees; she is certain that he was wounded in the war, that he will try to start a conversation, that her deficient French will betray her. Or that Max will say something. Or that the man can already tell. Maybe she smells German. He’ll say, You did this to me. Please. Not in front of my son. But the train jolts into motion, and the man finishes his cigarette and gives her a preoccupied smile and promptly falls asleep. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

74 " He and Werner eat their first meal in their starchy new uniforms at a long wooden table in the refectory. Some boys talk in whispers, some sit alone, some gulp food as if they have not eaten in days. Through three arched windows, dawn sends a sheaf of hallowed golden rays. Frederick flutters his fingers and asks, “Do you like birds?” “Sure.” “Do you know about hooded crows? "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

75 " Marie-Laure sits among them, wondering who will cave, who will tattle, who will be the bravest. Who will lie on her back and let her last breath curl up to the ceiling as a curse upon the invaders. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

76 " That Dr. Hauptmann might have ties so far up—that the telephone on his desk connects him with men a hundred miles away who could probably wag a finger and send a dozen Messerschmitts streaming up from an airfield to strafe some city—intoxicates Werner. We live in exceptional times. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

77 " The weather in this place: you can feel it between your fingers. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

78 " Cold demanded a sharper, simpler view of things: in those temperatures death hovered at the margins, offering clarity, providing precision. But it blurred things, too: the border between dreams and wakefulness, the way it pulled life from fingers and toes, and released them reluctantly, temporarily. The way the wind came, like news from another, more tenuous world, and stirred the trees. "

― Anthony Doerr , About Grace

79 " Then a state-sponsored play out of Berlin begins: a story of invaders sneaking into a village at night. All twelve children sit riveted. In the play, the invaders pose as hook-nosed department-store owners, crooked jewelers, dishonorable bankers; they sell glittering trash; they drive established village businessmen out of work. Soon they plot to murder German children in their beds. Eventually a vigilant and humble neighbor catches on. Police are called: big handsome-sounding policemen with splendid voices. They break down the doors. They drag the invaders away. A patriotic march plays. Everyone is happy again. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See

80 " Once in the glass, as dark as blood, the Bordeaux seems almost as though it is a living thing. Von Rumpel takes pleasure in knowing that he is the only person in the world who will have the privilege of tasting it before it is gone. "

― Anthony Doerr , All the Light We Cannot See