Mandy Robotham > Quotes

“But I was even more certain that all babies are precious to someone, that we did not have the right to play judge, jury or God.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“There were only a few times in our thirty-year marriage when we talked of our shadows; we agreed on having been different people then. War had moulded us, but could never define how we emerged, as humans.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“Sometimes, I find it hard to remember things - details of daily life - but it's the privilege of age that you can recall events of forty-five years ago with clarity. Some I want to shy away from, but I have long since battled with my demons and we have come to an impasse. They are part of the package.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“all babies were born equal at that split second and all deserved the chance of life. It was the moments, months and years afterwards that fractured them into an unequal world.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“I was a firm believer that anxiety was our enemy, a generous dose of humour being the best medicine.”
― Mandy Robotham, A Woman of War

“It felt like a real dinner, and the conversation flowed, about life and families, my work and his study. Incredibly, we managed to sidestep the monolith of the war and the Nazis, and it gave me hope that below the ground-in horror, the layers of distrust, we could be people together, stripped of allegiances to one side or the other.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“Anke, there is diversity in defiance,’ my wise father advised. ‘Be clever in your deceit.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“Nazis and fascists emerge as the losers, in seeing what humanity they had wither to nothing.”
― Mandy Robotham, The Secret Messenger

“When you saw so much horror, destruction and inhumanity in one place, it was the simplest things that broke your resolve and reminded you of kindness in the world.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“the oppressor claiming to be the victim to his own people, the warmonger painted as peacemaker.”
― Mandy Robotham, The Berlin Girl

“There was no going back. This was war, no half measures, no barriers, no 'let's wait and see'. Love or lust? When there was little time to analyse either; you made up something in between and lived the moment.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“Midwifery is an art much more than it’s a science.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“There’s nothing natural about being starved and worked to death, because you hold beliefs close to your heart.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“there is diversity in defiance,’ my wise father advised. ‘Be clever in your deceit.”
― Mandy Robotham, A Woman of War

“Well, it means dogsbody really, but they couldn’t very well put that in the job description.”
― Mandy Robotham, The Berlin Girl

“On her way to the sandwich shop, Marnie notes with sadness that a hole has been gouged in one of the crescents of white Regency houses at the end of Portland Place, like a perfect set of dentures with one tooth plucked out. And yet two doors away, a man patiently pushes a lawnmower up and down the front garden. He’s heard you, Winston – keep calm and carry on. Silly as it sounds, she feels as if the scene”
― Mandy Robotham, The War Pianist

“I'm strangely sad, not for humanity, because those on the Eastern side might finally know something of democracy in time, but because those bricks assure me I'm not alone in my memories of that time. Each one of us old enough to see the Wall go up would remember the time before, during and after the rage that took hold of Germany, Europe and the world. Today's little piles of rubble are a reminder of that moon rock landscape of post-war Berlin. In an odd way, that's comforting.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“noticed,”
― Mandy Robotham, The Berlin Girl

“I yearned to finger the pages of some other world, a historical drama perhaps, to take me out of where I was.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“heading”
― Mandy Robotham, The Berlin Girl

“ Each of us had our way of creating a small world impenetrable to the harsh reality of noise and stench around us. It was a tiny cosmos where we cried and laughed with them, where we held a space - perhaps, only for a few minutes - so pure that only their child, their baby, existed for that time. Their history. The burning ache of a baby's parting was no less painful, but alongside the sadness sat memories of what they did for their babies - memories of being a mother. ”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“platform.”
― Mandy Robotham, The War Pianist

“It was a mother’s reflex: laying down your own life to save a new one.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“Why?’ Karin says, again and again. ‘Because in the end, we’re proof, aren’t we? This whole country is – that you can’t control people’s thoughts. What goes on in their heads.”
― Mandy Robotham, The Girl Behind the Wall

“For the first time in months, I have only myself to help boost my own inner spirits. And I find myself as barren as my own larder.”
― Mandy Robotham, The Secret Messenger

“And that was my encounter with the Fuhrer, not a syllable uttered - no fear exuded, no monster on show, no devilish glint in his eye. A man who showed common courtesy, to someone he had never met before.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“If there’s one certainty about birth, it’s that no one is pregnant forever.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“The war was like a sea creature, an octopus with countless tentacles, sucking in everyone who tried to hide on the calm of the sea bed.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife

“Raymond stands and puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘If you need a decent funeral director, I’ve got a name.’ Of course he has. She has to face it. There’s no one else to help, and Marnie doesn’t expect her parents will travel down to London for the funeral. They were fearful before Hitler’s blitzkrieg, and still terrified more than four hundred miles to the north. Only she and her cousin, Susie, are left in London. Grandad’s diaries and order books went up in smoke, so there’s little chance of contacting even his best customers. Besides which, who has the will amid this chaos to attend the funeral of their tailor? At”
― Mandy Robotham, The War Pianist

“But I was even more certain that all babies are precious to someone, that we did not have the right to play judge, jury or God. Ever.”
― Mandy Robotham, The German Midwife