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Jenny Erpenbeck QUOTES

Jenny Erpenbeck QUOTES

1 " This here is your inheritance, says the senior partner. Yes, he says, Ludwig, I know, and stows the plan for the bathing house (5.5m long, 3.8m wide, outer wall construction: wood, roof construction: thatch), stows both the plan and the mosquito in his briefcase. On a German shelf, this mosquito, pressed flat between large quantities of paper, will outlast time and times, and one day it might even be petrified, who knows. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Visitation

2 " Adventure is really always just subjecting yourself to something unfamiliar "

― Jenny Erpenbeck

3 " Home. When it rains, you can smell the leaves in the forest and the sand. It's all so small and mild, the landscape surrounding the lake, so manageable. The leaves and the sand are so close, it's as if you might, if you wanted, pull them on over your head. And the lake always laps at the shore so gently, licking the hand you dip into it like a young dog, and the water is soft and shallow. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Visitation

4 " A house is your third skin, after the skin made of flesh and clothing. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Visitation

5 " ...die Zeit scheint ihr zur Verfügung zu stehen wie ein Haus, in dem sie mal dieses, mal jenes Zimmer betreten kann. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck

6 " Über das sprechen, was Zeit eigentlich ist, kann er wahrscheinlich am besten mit denen, die aus ihr hinausgefallen sind. Oder in sie hineingesperrt, wenn man so will. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Go, Went, Gone

7 " Wenn man verstehen will, was einer meint oder sagt, muss man im Grunde das, was er meint oder sagt, immer schon wissen. Ist dann ein gelungener Dialog nur Wiedererkennen? Und das Verstehen nicht etwas ein Weg, sondern vielmehr ein Zustand? "

― Jenny Erpenbeck

8 " The Lord gave, and the Lord took away, her grandmother said to her at the edge of the grave. But that wasn't right, because the Lord had taken away much more than had been there to start with, and everything her child might have become was now lying there at the bottom of the pit, waiting to be covered up. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , The End of Days

9 " [...] dass die Erde eher wie eine Müllhalde ist, die verschiedenen Zeiten fallen im Dunkeln, den Mund mit Erde gefüllt, übereinander her, die eine begattet die andre, ohne fruchtbar zu sein, und der Fortschritt besteht immer wieder nur darin, dass die, die auf dieser Erde herumgehen, von alldem nichts wissen. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck

10 " Quasi avesse tenuto una breve rappresentazione teatrale, l'avvocato si mette una mano sul cuore e si inchina. Poi apre la porta a due battenti e dice: Permettono? a indicare che il colloquio è finito. Richard sa benissimo anche lui che fuori sono in attesa molti rumeni, vietnamiti e africani. Passando con Ithemba davanti al guardaroba e vedendo un cilindro sulla mensola per cappelli, gli viene quasi il dubbio che questo avvocato dalle sembianze di un gufo sia arrivato in volo, dal lontano Ottocento, direttamente nel ventunesimo secolo – in questo secolo nuovo e tuttavia così vecchio, con i suoi interminabili flussi di esseri umani che, dopo essere sopravvissuti alla traversata in un mare vero, rischiano ora di affogare nei fiumi e nei mari di carte. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck

11 " Leidt de vrede, waar de mensheid te allen tijde naar heeft verlangd en die tot nu toe maar in zo weinig delen van de wereld is verwezenlijkt, er alleen toe dat hij niet wordt gedeeld met degenen die er hun toevlucht zoeken, maar zo agressief wordt verdedigd dat hij er zelf bijna uitziet als een oorlog? "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Go, Went, Gone

12 " Which means that in the end there are certain things you can take with you when you flee, things that have no weight, such as music. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Visitation

13 " How many times, he wonders, must a person relearn everything he knows, rediscovering it over and over, and how many coverings must be torn away before he's finally able to truly grasp things, to understand them to the bone? Is a human lifetime long enough? His lifetime, or anyone else's? "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Go, Went, Gone

14 " ... it would be lovely if he and his wife would succeed in dying before the matter of inherited property was finally settled. Then the person giving the speech at the funeral would be able to say that until the very end they had been able to pursue what they loved: sailing. [p. 121] "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Visitation

15 " Have the people living here under untroubled circumstances and at so great a distance from the wars of others been afflicted with a poverty of experience, a sort of emotional anemia? Must living in peace - so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world - inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war? "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Go, Went, Gone

16 " ...but with each step you take while fleeing, your baggage grows less and less, with more and more left behind, and sooner or later you just stop and sit there, and then all that is left of life is life itself, and everything else is lying in all the ditches beside all the roads in a land as enormous as the air, and surely here as well you can find those dandelions, these larks. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Visitation

17 " Wie oft wohl muss einer das, was er weiß, noch einmal lernen, wieder und wieder entdecken, wie viele Verkleidungen abreißen, bis er Dinge wirklich versteht bis auf die Knochen? Reicht überhaupt eine Lebenszeit dafür aus? "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Go, Went, Gone

18 " Everything had kept getting less, they'd had to leave behind more and more baggage, or else it was taken from them, as though they were now too weak to carry all those things that are part of life, as though someone were trying to force them into old age by relieving them of all this. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Visitation

19 " To understand what a person means or says, it’s basically necessary to already know what that person means or is saying. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Go, Went, Gone

20 " Nothing is nicer than diving with your eyes open. Diving down as far as the shimmering legs of your mother and father who have just come back from swimming and now are wading to shore through the shallow water. Nothing more fun than to tickle them and to hear, muffled by the water, how they shriek because they know it will make their child happy. "

― Jenny Erpenbeck , Visitation