Quotes from Anthony Doerr

Beyond the broken window hangs a windless night. Ashes swirling in starlight.

Gone or resolved to go; is there much difference?

But the moonlight stays unmoved by the wind, passing through clouds, through air, in what seems to Werner like impossibly slow, imperturbable rays. They hang across the buckling grass. Why doesn't the wind move the light?

lambs and rabbits; Claude buckles the meat into

and inside this universe spin countless galaxies

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother's birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.

During the last war, Etienne knew artillerymen who could peer through field glasses and discern their shells' damage by the colors thrown skyward. Gray was stone. Brown was soil. Pink was flesh.

The total entropy of any system, said Dr. Hauptmann, will decrease only if the entropy of another system will increase. Nature demands symmetry. Ordnung muss sein.

push back the hood of grief...

If your same blood doesn't run in the arms and legs of the person you're next to, you can't trust anything.

from Volkheimer to Werner.

It's as if the city has become a library of books in an unknown language.

The goddess tells the lonely sailor not to be afraid, that it is better to be brave in all things

Other times, the corpses bear no apparent injuries, and it is these that fill Jutta with dread: people who look like they are a moment away from rising up and slogging back to work with the rest of them.

Beneath their wimples the faces of the nuns of the order resemble dried thistles

A spark in the night.

people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?

All of it is burning. Every memory he ever made.

He understands that people will want to hear something, but not the truth: they'll want a story of perseverance and pluck, good overcoming evil, a homecoming song about a hero who brought light into dark places.

I suppose that is the point, no? To make us wonder?

It's all right," he told her. "Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one.

We will call him Omeir. One who lives long.

What light shines at night! He never knew. Light will blind him.

But on most days, especially the warm ones, life exhausts him; the worsening traffic and graffiti and company politics, everyone grousing about bonuses, benefits, overtime.