Ursula Hegi > Quotes

“That's the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You'll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and -- in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth of your love -- you come to understand the tragic, unrequited love of your own parents.”
― Ursula Hegi

“About endings....unless we do them well, we have to keep repeating them.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Some acts of faith, I believe, have the power to grant us something infinitely wiser than we imagine”
― Ursula Hegi, Floating in My Mother's Palm

“it only occurred to me much later that the summer I was fourteen I had saved a life--not the life of a stranger as I had imagined--but the life I had taken for granted and which, in the years to come, I would take for granted again.”
― Ursula Hegi, Floating in My Mother's Palm

“What the river was showing her now was that she could flow beyond the brokenness, redeem herself, and fuse once more.”
― Ursula Hegi

“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.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“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.”
― Ursula Hegi

“And what to embrace.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“We Germans have a history of sacrificing everything for one strong leader,” her father had said. “It’s our fear of chaos.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Marrying a woman who was reckless must have been the ultimate reckless act, requiring a lifetime of balancing to keep both of them safe”
― Ursula Hegi, Floating in My Mother's Palm

“The absence of doubt will turn humans into beasts.”
― Ursula Hegi, Children and Fire

“Everyone does it."

"But no one talks about it," Gloria said. "About the different levels of skill involved. You have to practice before you become a great masturbator.”
― Ursula Hegi, Hotel of the Saints

“Only a few people in Burgdorf had read Mein Kampf, and many thought that all this talk about Rssenreinheit-purity of the race-was ludicrous and impossible to enforce. Yet the long training in obedience to elders, government, and church made it difficult-even for those who considered the views of the Nazis dishonorable-to give voice to their misgivings. And so they kept hushed, yielding to each new indignity while they waited for the Nazis and their ideas to go away, but with each compliance they relinquished more of themselves, weakening the texture of the community while the power of the Nazis swelled.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“And yet, just because a story was a certain way didn't mean it would always be like that: stories took their old shape with them and fused it with the new shape. She didn't understand yet how all the tangles of their lives would sort themselves out in her story, but she supposed it would be like raking: not every bit of earth would be untangled at once.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“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.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“It was the kind of silence that fills you with light and makes you believe you can do anything you want.”
― Ursula Hegi, Floating in My Mother's Palm

“And what she wanted more than anything that moment was for all the differences between people to matter no more - differences in size and race and belief....”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“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.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

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

“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.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“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.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“The cats were still there, dozens of them, the color of the cliffs, dozing in the sand beneath the bushes, invisible until they stirred or darted away. Waves came in high and crashed down like shelves overcrowded with books-abrupt and massive.”
― Ursula Hegi

“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.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“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.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“A perfectly happy marriage? There is no such thing. There are strong marriages that can survive problems, but happiness is such a brief condition, interrupted by difficulties and plain, boring routine.”
― Ursula Hegi, Intrusions

“But Seehund hurled his love at her, his entire body. It was a love she recognized—she’d felt it within herself but had never been able to demonstrate it with such abandon.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“She tends the fire

Burning his letters. They turn black
like thin mourning dresses.
Yellow names, leaping; above them
a blonde woman's hair on her bare shoulders.
Red hollow glowing beneath. Illusion of passion.
Like fragile layers of widow weeds, matted bluish,
shiny, worn and buttons, yes, cheap buttons
and words. Her fingers touch the smooth skin
on her breasts. She tends the fire.”
― Ursula Hegi

“The risk her stories posed to others—and to herself—was more subtle. When she was younger, she had used secrets as if they were currency, but she’d found out how secrets could use her instead by becoming stronger than she. It happened whenever she couldn’t stay away from a secret—drawn to it the way Georg Weiler was drawn to the bottle—though she sensed it would be better for her not to know.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Their train speeds through the cities and crosses rivers until it reaches Paris. They leave the station, their arms around each other, and walk to the Jardin des Plantes where the panther paces the length of his cage. The young teacher nods as Hannelore Beier reaches into the cage, and strokes the animal's magnificent neck. The panther arches his back. A curtain lifts from his pupils as the pastor's sister slides aside the bolt that has kept him in captivity. His eyes like sudden, green flames, he recognizes a world beyond the bars of his cage.”
― Ursula Hegi, Floating in My Mother's Palm

“It was like that with many other events, and it took courage for the few, who would preserve the texture of the truth, not to let its fibers slip beneath the web of silence and collusion which people—often with the best of intentions—spun to sustain and protect one another.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River