Quotes from Hans Fallada

It doesn't matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not.

As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn't mean that we are alone.

Not that she's a political animal, she's just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she's of the view that you don't bring children into the world to have them shot.

It doesn't matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not.

She had known for a long time that you had to pay for everything in life, and usually more than it was worth.

Everyone facing death, especially premature death, like us, will be kicking themselves about each wasted hour.

I don't want any funny business, and above all I don't want to be dragged into other people's funny business. If it's to be my head on the block, I want to know that it's doing there, and not that it's some stupid things that other people have done.

They had failed to understand that there was no such thing as private life in wartime Germany. No amount of reticence could change the fact that every individual German belonged to the generality of Germans and must share in the general destiny of Germany, even as more and more bombs were falling on the just and unjust alike.

Sometimes Dr Reichhardt would say, 'We live not for ourselves, but for others. What we make of ourselves we make not for ourselves, but for others…

Imam gospodaricu koju sam dužan da slušam, ona vlada mnom, vama, svetom, ?ak i ovim današnjim svetom napolju, a ta gospodarica je pravda. U nju sam oduvek verovao, verujem i danas, i pravda je jedini putokaz mog postupanja...

Who wants to die?' he asked. 'Everyone wants to live, everyone – even the most miserable worm is screaming for life! I want to live, too. But maybe it's a good thing, Anna, even in the midst of life to think of a wretched death, and to get ready for it. So that you know you'll be able to die properly, without moaning and whimpering. That would be disgusting to me…

Das Leben geht immer weiter, auch unter Ruinen. Die Ruinen sind unwichtig, aber das Leben ist wichtig. Das Leben mit einem Grashalm in der Stadtmitte zwischen tausend zerstörten Steinblöcken. Es geht immer weiter.

Alles ist Alleinsein.

Das ist es ja, was ich immer sage: wir sind feige. Wir denken nur an das, was mit uns geschehen wird, nie an das, was den andern geschieht.

it will have helped us to feel that we have behaved decently till the end . . . we all acted alone, we were all caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn't mean that we are alone, Quangel, or that our deaths will be in vain.

Anna Quangel felt herself trembling. Then she looked over at Otto again. He might be right: whether their act was big or small, no one could risk more than his life. Each according to his strength and abilities, but the main thing was, you fought back. Still

Because it is written that you reap what you sow, and the boy had sown good corn.

The trembling increased, a moan of grief was heard, nothing articulate - as a bird in the night sometimes laments alone.

I believe the last thing that runs through the brain of a dying man is hope.

Like many city dwellers, they'd had the mistaken belief that spying was only really bad in Berlin and that decency still prevailed in small towns. And like many city dwellers, they had made the painful discovery that recrimination, eavesdropping, and informing were ten times worse in the small towns than in the big city. In a small town everyone was fully exposed; you couldn't even disappear in the crowd.

The air was thick with betrayal. No one could trust anyone else, and in that dismal atmosphere the men seemed to grow even duller, devolving into mechanical extensions of the machines they serviced.

DON'T GIVE TO THE WINTER RELIEF FUND!

everyone ought to be interested in politics. If we all had been, then maybe the Nazis wouldn't have got their hands on power;

Weil die an den Himmel glauben, wollen sie auf der Erde nichts ändern.