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Anna Seghers QUOTES

Anna Seghers QUOTES

1 " She had never been able to stand her husband, though not for one minute in their married life had she permitted this to make her unhappy. Only people who are fond of somebody can ever be unhappy, she had told her daughter before her wedding. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

2 " What magic was this, brewed from equal parts of age-old memories and total oblivion. One could have believed that the last war these people had fought had left only happy memories, had carried in its wake nothing but joy and prosperity. Women and girls were smiling as if their sons and lovers were invulnerable. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

3 " For the first time back then, I thought about everything seriously. The past and the future, both equally unknowable, and also this ongoing situation that the consulates call "transitory" but that we know in everyday language as "the present. "

― Anna Seghers , Transit

4 " Während die Starken sich ruhig einmal irren können, ohne etwas zu verlieren, weil selbst die mächtigsten Menschen noch Menschen sind - ja sogar ihre Irrtümer machen sie nur noch menschlicher -,
darf sich, wer sich als Allmacht aufspielt, niemals irren, weil es entweder Allmacht ist oder gar nichts. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

5 " Not only can what others are suffering be a consolation while we are suffering, but even knowing what others suffered long ago can be consoling. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

6 " What can I expect here? You know the fairy tale about the man who died, don’t you? He was waiting in Eternity to find out what the Lord had decided to do with him. He waited and waited, for one year, ten years, a hundred years. He begged and pleaded for a decision. Finally he couldn’t bear the waiting any longer. Then they said to him: ‘What do you think you’re waiting for? You’ve been in Hell for a long time already. "

― Anna Seghers , Transit

7 " When you're young and healthy you can recover quickly from a defeat. But betrayal is different—it paralyzes you. "

― Anna Seghers , Transit

8 " Death was just as close, but not behind him; it was everywhere. It was inescapable; he felt death’s physical presence—as if death itself were something alive. Like in the old pictures, a creature that can hide behind a bed of asters or behind a baby carriage and can come out and touch you. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

9 " Und wenn er auch nur noch die Kraft für eine einzige winzig kleine Bewegung hatte, auf die Freiheit hin, wie sinnlos und nutzlos diese Bewegung auch sein mochte, er wollte diese Bewegung doch noch gemacht haben. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

10 " All this time you’ve been saying, there’s nothing you can do to combat it, that you’re powerless to prevail against it, that you just have to wait it out. Wait, I thought to myself, he wants to wait until they’ve trampled everything that was precious to him. Please understand me. I wasn’t even twenty when I left my parents to marry you, and I left my home back then because I was repelled by everything there, my father, my brothers, the silence in our living room every evening. But it’s been just as silent here in our place recently as it used to be back home. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

11 " Before the eyes of the SA unit that had not yet marched off, Beutler crawled the last stretch without help. Not on his knees, but rather, perhaps because he’d been kicked, sideways so that his face was turned up. And now as the man crept past him, Bunsen, looking down, noticed what was special about the face. It was laughing. The recaptured prisoner lay there in his bloody smock, with blood in his ears, and his large white teeth showing, and he seemed to be writhing in silent laughter. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

12 " Wait, I thought to myself! He wants to wait until everything that once was dear to him is trampled under foot. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

13 " Make sure you keep crawling, George. Don’t think you’ve been discovered. Lots of guys were discovered that way, because they were imagining they’d already been discovered and then did something foolish. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

14 " Probably a lot like what happened last summer when one of those poor devils tried to leave and they shot him—and the siren kept on howling even after he was already dead. There never used to be shenanigans like that before around here. Why did they have to plop this concentration camp down right here, of all places, right in front of our noses? On the other hand, at least people in the area were earning some money now, whereas before they’d had to skimp and scrape for a living, taking every last little thing to sell at the market. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

15 " Even if they were to shoot me, they'd never be able to eradicate me. I feel I know this country, its work, its people, its hills and mountains, its peaches and its grapes too well. If you bleed to death on familiar soil, something of you will continue to grow like the sprouts that come up after bushes and trees have been cut down. "

― Anna Seghers , Transit

16 " How empty the meadow was now! Eugenia’s heart contracted. Even though she didn’t care all that much for Ernst, and the three days he grazed his sheep there resulted only in more work for her and stupid talk. How quickly the little forest had swallowed them all up; maybe they were already coming out into the open on the other side. But the meadow would remain empty till next year! That reminded her of all sorts of things that had come and gone, and once they were gone, nothing was as it had been before. Instead there was emptiness and silence, enough to make you weep. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

17 " When I was still a living man in the life that I lived, I met a young fellow. His name was George. I latched on to him. We shared our pain and joy. He was much younger than I was. I valued everything about young George. In that young man I found again everything I prized in life. Now he has as little to do with me as a living man does with a dead one. May he think of me from time to time, if he has the time for it. I know that the living are very busy. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

18 " What consequences can there be for a dead man they throw from one grave into another? Not even a tombstone as tall as a house on his final resting place would be of any consequence to the dead man. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

19 " She had said, “Those people at the Gestapo, they know everything about a person.” Mrs. Wallau had said, “That’s all exaggeration. They only know what they’ve been told. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz

20 " God had nothing to do with it, or only as much as He has something to do with everything. It was all just as I imagined it would be. A huge lot of hocus-pocus. For hours they put me to the acid test. Except I never imagined that they would sit there and write down all the rubbish I was spouting, and that after that I had to write my name under it, saying that I myself had really spouted all that. "

― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz