Quotes from Anthony Doerr

this summer scientists announced that in the last 40 yrs humans have killed 60 percent of the wild mammals and fishes and birds on earth. Is that fun? Also in the past 30 yrs, we melted 95 percent of the oldest thickest ice in the arctic.

Look closely and the picturesque inevitably cracks apart and becomes more interesting.

Have I told you kids what Aethon means?" They shake their heads; he writes ????? across an entire sheet of paper. "Blazing," he says. "Burning, fiery. Some say it can mean hungry too.

The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

the littlest streams, high on the mountain, small enough to dam with your hand, would eventually join the river, and that the river, though quick and violent, was but a drop in the eye of the great Ocean that encircles all the lands of the world, and contains every dream everyone has ever dreamed.

Before she turns fourteen, every person she knows will be either enslaved or dead.

packed tighter than two coats of paint

What mazes there are in this world. The branches of trees, the filigree of roots...None more complicated than the human brain...what may be the most complex object in existence; one wet kilogram within which spin universes.

Reading about declining owl populations led him to deforestation which led to soil erosion which led to ocean pollution which led to coral bleaching, everything warming, melting, and dying faster than scientists predicted, every system on the planet connected by countless invisible threads to every other:

Cars growl in the streets; leaves whisper in the sky; blood rustles through her inner ears. In the stairwell, in the kitchen, even beside her bed, grown-up voices speak of despair.

Disgrace is not to fall but to lie.

Werner likes to crouch in his dormer and imagine radio waves like mile-long harp strings,bending and vibrating over Zollverein,flying through forests,through cities,through walls.At midnight he and Jutta prowl the ionosphere,searching for that lavish,penetrating voice.When they find it,Werner feels as if he has been launched into a different existence,a secret place where great discoveries are possible,where an orphan from a coal town can solve some vital mystery hidden in the physical world.

They look like scarecrows shipping west to be staked in some terrible garden.

A una chica la han echado hoy de la piscina. A inge Hachmann. Nos han dicho que no podemos nadar con mestizas, que es poco higiénico. Una mestiza, Werner. ¿No somos nosotro stamibén mestizos? ¿La mitad de nuestra madre y la otra mitad de nuestro padre?

Sabe a maior lição da história? A história é aquilo que os vitoriosos determinam. Eis a lição. Seja qual for o vencedor, ele é quem decide a história.

Siga a lógica. Todo efeito tem sua causa, e todo problema tem sua solução. Toda fechadura tem sua chave.

Cada minuto que passa é um minuto a menos nesta casa. Nesta vida.

unchanging, everlasting, no months, no years, every hour like spring on the clearest, most gold-green morning, the dew like ·[diamonds?]·, the towers like honeycombs, and the western zephyr was the only breeze…

A voice materializes out of the distortion in his headphones, then fades, and he goes ferreting after it. There, thinks Werner when he finds it again, there : a feeling like shutting your eyes and feeling your way down a mile-long thread until your fingernails find the tiny lump of a knot.

Only through the hottest fires, whispers the radio, can purification be achieved. Only through the harshest tests can God's chosen rise.

plumpest raisins, finest custards, salmon and sardines… … came the tortoise, the honeycakes, poppies and squills, and the ·[next?]·Ã¢â'¬Â¦ … I ate until I could ·[burst?]·, then ate more…

Her students come and go..she loves to ask them about their lives, to wonder what adventures they've had, what lusts, what secret follies they carry in their hearts.

É certo — pergunta Jutta — fazer algo apenas porque todas as outras pessoas estão fazendo?

Quem sabia que o amor poderia matar?