Quotes from Ursula Hegi

We Germans have a history of sacrificing everything for one strong leader," her father had said. "It's our fear of chaos.

A thought came to her that had insisted on settling with her for some time now, a thought that would anger Michel if she ever told him. Given a choice, she would rather be the one who was persecuted than the one who did the persecuting-- both had a terrible price to pay, but she would rather endure humiliation and fear than grow numb to what it was to be human.

Given a choice, she would rather be the one who was persecuted than the one doing the persecuting-- both had a terrible price to pay, but she would rather endure humiliation and fear than grow numb to what it was to be human.

Now the purpose of her stories had changed. She spun them to discover their meaning. In the telling, she found, you reached a point where you could not go back, where—as the stories changed—it transformed you, too.

said, "but the school board—" He opened his arms in a helpless sweep. "If I can help . . ." The following Wednesday the bells of the chapel did not ring, and when the old women

The absence of doubt will turn humans into beasts.

If I look closely, I can almost see myself floating in my mother's palm. Yet, when I shut my eyes, I find a different image of my mother releasing me as we dance in the storm and twirl in separate circles that cause the water to ripple from us in widening rings which merge in one ebbing bracelet of waves where the borders of the quarry meet the water, far from the center where my mother and I continue to spin our bodies in the radiant sheen of lightning.

High in the hazy sky, the snowfkakes looked tiny and all alike, but as they drifted past the narrow window of the sewing room, all were unique - long or round or triangular - as if they'd borrowed their shapes from the clouds they'd come from.

Deine Anpassungsfäheigkeit—Your ability to adapt," her husband said, "is far more dangerous to you than any of them will ever be. You'll keep adapting and adapting until nothing is left.

These are things," Trudi's father told her long before she was old enough for confession, "that the church calls sins, but they are part of being human. And those we need to embrace. The most important thing--" He paused. "--is to be kind.

I think . . . you should have children, John." At least he's no longer talking about bugs. "I'm too young, Dad." "It's the most important thing . . . I've done in . . . my life.

She fought him by reminding herself what her father had said to Emil Hesping—that they lived in a country where believing had taken the place of knowing.

With the stories of people she'd known since her childhood it was like that: one incident in their lives might come to an ending, but others would lead into new veins, and what was fascinating was to look at the whole of it and discern a pattern, a way of being, that had shaped those passages.

And throughout all, Trudi wove the assurance...that - once someone had been in your life - you could keep that person there despite the agony of loss, as long as you had faith that you could bring the sum of all your hours together in one shining moment.

Because of the people in history, Trudi felt a far stronger link than ever before to the people in her town, and from all this grew new stories, which she told to Eva and her father, and to Frau Abramowitz who listened to every word and sighed, "Trudi, you and your splendid imagination.

She also told me it wore down her spirit to live in the desert landscape that was parched by midsummer, to plant a garden each spring and struggle to keep it alive past July.

Carefully, the girl skimmed her fingers across her mother's knee. It was smooth; the skin had closed across the tiny wounds like the surface of the river after you toss stones into the waves. Only you knew they were there. Unless you told.