Sally Carson > Quotes

“The country was like a person tossing in a frightened sleep, half conscious yet half unconscious of the nightmare into which, on awaking, it was to be so abruptly plunged.”
― Sally Carson, Crooked Cross

“From the moment that those running footsteps had come clamoring towards her, Lexa for the first time this summer was wide awake. The last warning of the peril in which she and Moritz stood had thundered its way into her consciousness with that sudden impetuous knocking. It had shaken her out of the quiet, doped state where actions and thoughts had been largely instinctive, were all reactions were mercifully numbed. (p. 316-317)”
― Sally Carson, ‎Crooked Cross

“Helmy was thrown on his own resources; the resources which he found near at hand and ready to welcome him were those of the Nazi Party.”
― Sally Carson, Crooked Cross

“Suddenly she realised Michael's significance to her period he was the one person who was detached from all this trouble; he was free of Germany. Yes, that was it, he was free - while they, every one of them, were mixed deeply in it, feeling every tremor of the giant convulsions in which it was throwing itself. You can't ever be free from what do you really belong to; a child afraid of its mother still belongs to her, is part of her initial self. So Lexa, Helmy, Elsa, Otto and all the young people in Germany felt themselves more than ever, not only a part of their country, but a part of its very thoughts and actions. (p. 179)”
― Sally Carson, ‎Crooked Cross

“Too much and too sudden power makes men lose all sense of proportion; blood turns such men into madmen.”
― Sally Carson, ‎Crooked Cross

“The flame of unrest was fanned by the careful attitude of newspapers, by spasmodic outbursts of lawlessness all over the country, and by the constant danger at all times to both Communists and Nazis. Sometimes it was a fight between two or three men; personal grievances to be settled, anger flaming up under insolent aggression. More often whole streetfuls of people were involved; instead of one or two deaths and a handful of men injured, the numbers would run to alarming proportions. Occasionally a whole town would be implicated. Quiet, non-political, peace-loving people waited behind closed doors for the shooting and the hurrying footsteps to cease; the streets were unsafe; the very nights were restless.”
― Sally Carson, Crooked Cross

“She forgot the red and white flag which flew out bright in the morning sky against the chimney pots, and she forgot the hurried conversations, the shouts, the frightened beating of her own heart. She forgot for one precious moment the screams, the blood, the waiting terror. She forgot Germany and the slow stain that was creepy and cross it to the south, to midsummer, to her own heart.

Somewhere beyond her at lay, waiting, unchallenged, forgotten behind the mountains. At any moment she might become frighteningly aware it: at any moment it might awake and remember her and surge towards her, touching her, carrying her with it. (p. 313)”
― Sally Carson, ‎Crooked Cross

“But,’ she insisted, ‘does a thing like lecturing to the Workers’ Guild – even when he does it without a political point of view – matter more than the value of his work?’ ‘To the Party, yes.”
― Sally Carson, Crooked Cross

“Communists, filled with as intense excitement as the Nazis, had no time to notice the lethargy and tired indifference with which the bulk of the people regarded the political muddle.”
― Sally Carson, Crooked Cross

“But to none of them, except perhaps to Helmy, did it seem definite that political events in Germany would conspire as they did to make the slur put on Jews not a mere idea of the moment, but a permanent handicap.”
― Sally Carson, Crooked Cross