Quotes from Elizabeth Dauphinee

It sounded more like a chant than a proper song—it did not stray from the few staggered notes that rose and fell with the tenor of his voice. It was beautiful and haunting and it seemed to reach into my chest and twist my heart in a painful vise. I wanted him to stop. But when he stopped, I was sorry.

Lukas are piled up like firewood for the competitive flames of my profession, I thought.

I could imagine it, I thought, but all I could ever do was imagine. I couldn't know. I couldn't feel that.

So I thought you would respond better to the lie than the truth," he

You guys writing on Bosnia don't hear our questions, because you don't speak our language.

The war had made everyone a liar, thought Milan bitterly. The war had made it so that one could not distinguish at all between what was true and what false, between victims and perpetrators, or between perpetrators and perpetrators, or victims and victims.

we all laugh and mourn and love and hate with the same breath of air in our lungs. We are guilty and innocent. There is only the difference of a hair between these.

forgiveness and responsibility are not the same thing. No one can absolve him of his responsibility. He will remain responsible for the rest of his life. And he knows it, or he would not have told you what he has done.

No one can be the judge of another until he recognizes that he himself is as guilty for the crime as the one who committed it—and maybe more so.

Denial is a normal response to evil.

differently?" "I cannot go back and choose again," he replied. "So I don't ask myself what I could have done. I ask myself how I can live with it today.

When you come near to something that can't be made right, you have to approach it with love, and not vengeance. Vengeance is how we got into this in the first place.

I shrugged, annoyed. How could I expect him to understand the philosophers I read? I expected his derision. And that was why I tried to avoid conversations about my research, I thought with triumphant self-pity. That was why I was less and less able to have conversations with people outside of my profession. I felt miserable, but also satisfied at having my rightness proven.

Sometimes people have a lot to lose by telling stories in certain ways, so they work very hard to hide the things that don't fit with their views of themselves,

Do you believe everything you hear?" he asked directly. "Of course not!" I answered. "Do you believe everything you say?" "Yes,

Sometimes the paths that lead back to places get blocked.