Debra Dean > Quotes

“She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves.”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“You're unusual. That's better than popular if you have some courage.”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“What is heartbreaking is that there is still beauty in the world.”
― Debra Dean

“Each day, the world is made fresh again, holy, and she takes it in, in all its raw intensity, like a young child. She feels something bloom in her chest—joy or grief, eventually they are inseparable. The world is so acutely beautiful, for all its horrors, that she will be sorry to leave it.”
― Debra Dean

“You should not give your whole heart to anything mortal, daughter.”
― Debra Dean, The Mirrored World

“No one weeps anymore, or if they do it is over small things, inconsequential moments that catch them unprepared. What is left that is heartbreaking? Not death: death is ordinary. What is heartbreaking is the sight of a single gull lifting effortlessly from a street lamp. Its wings unfurl like silk scarves against the mauve sky, and Marina hears the rustle of its feathers. What is heartbreaking is that there is still beauty in the world.”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“How may one describe enchantment? As he sang, his countenance softened, and without benefit of costume or any other artifice of the stage, the Gaspari I knew faded and was transfored into something eerily beautiful. A delicate hand, rising and turning like a vine, seemed to unfurl this otherworldy sound into the air. Though I could not translate the words, there was no need, for the sound went straight to my soul, transcending the poor and broken language we mortals must use. I slipped gratefully out of my body and floated on the current of music, feeling that all of us round the table were a single spirit, a single being. I was filled with such love. The voice soared, wave upon wave, until the last note, quivering with tenderness, put us ashore again too soon.”
― Debra Dean, The Mirrored World

“Whatever is eating her brain consumes only the fresher memories, the unripe moments”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“is eating her brain consumes only the fresher memories, the unripe moments. Her distant past is preserved, better than preserved. Moments that occurred in Leningrad sixty-some years”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“But now I know, while beauty lives
So long will live my power to grieve.”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“Whatever we know as children, this is the world, eaten whole and without question.”
― Debra Dean, The Mirrored World

“Once she had thought that she might discover some key to her mother if only she could get her likeness right, but she has since learned that the mysteries of another person only deepen, the longer one looks.”
― Debra Dean

“didn’t matter. The bond that had first brought them together as children existed whether they spoke of it or not, the bond of survivors. Here in America, a relentlessly foolish and optimistic country, what they knew drew them closer together. She was his country and he hers. They were inseparable. Until now. She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves.”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“A messzelátóval ki tudja venni a város szélén fellobbanó tüzet: a vityebszki rendező pályaudvarnál látja először, aztán többet egy rakáson, majd a tüzek egyenes vonalban terjednek tovább a sötétbe borult városi tájon; úgy nyílnak ki, mint a sorba ültetett, narancsvörös tulipánok.”
― Debra Dean, Leningrádi Madonnák

“He nods solemnly and repeats the stock response of the Housing Committee whenever they address the perpetual shortage of apartments in Leningrad. “Privacy is a conceit of degenerate societies.”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“Before you either turn away in disgust or wink knowingly at one another, you should know that the artist insists that this is a picture about love. Filial love. The old man has been condemned by the Roman senate to die of hunger, and his daughter has come to his prison cell and offered her breast to feed him. This has nothing to do with with the decorous love or amorous passions one is more accustomed to seeing in a painting. It is raw and wretched and demeaning. In the end, we are physical bodies and every abstract notion about love sinks beneath this fact.”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“They don't teach this in school anymore?' Anya asks and clucks in dismay. 'When I was a girl, we made memory palaces to helps us memorize for our examinations. You chose an actual place, a palace works best, but any building with lots of rooms would do, and then you furnished it with whatever you wished to remember.... Bur once you had learned the rooms, in your imagination you could add anything you wish. So, when we needed to memorize the Law of God, for instance, we closed our eyes and put a question and answer in each room." Page 68-69”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“I am often tongue-tied with strangers and have what the philosopher Monsieur Diderot calls l’esprit de l’escalier, staircase wit: only long after a remark is made to me will my imagination supply the thing I should have said in reply.”
― Debra Dean, The Mirrored World

“back”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“Stalin”
― Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad

“To love deeply is to risk being undone.”
― Debra Dean, The Mirrored World

“it is on the ninth day after death that the soul is said to leave the body. On the fortieth day, it departs this world. Between these two points lies a blank space that the Church does not account for, but peasants will tell you that the soul returns home and takes up residence behind the stove.”
― Debra Dean, The Mirrored World

“For her part, my mother was probably more alike him than he suspected, the chief difference being that showing her husband affection was among her duties. Though she might harshly reprimand a servant or child, in his presence she was always soft-spoken and demure. She deferred to his opinions, flattered his vanities, and endured his rebukes with meekness. Love was a choice she made, and then made again daily for the remainder of her life. From her I learnt that a woman should not expect her happiness to come from the man himself, but from those acts of devotion she showed to him.”
― Debra Dean, The Mirrored World