Lucas Rijneveld > Quotes

“I’ve discovered that there are two ways of losing your belief: some people lose God when they find themselves; some people lose God when they lose themselves.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“Lots of people want to run away, but the ones who really do rarely announce it beforehand: they just go.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, De avond is ongemak

“Nobody knows my heart. It's hidden deep side my coat, my skin, my ribs. My heart was important for nine months inside my mother's belly, but once I left the belly, everyone stopped caring whether it beat enough times per hour. No one worries when it stops or begins to beat fast, telling me there must be something wrong.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, De avond is ongemak

“Even though it will feel uncomfortable for a while, but according to the pastor, discomfort is good. In discomfort we are real.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“We never really live in the seasons as we’re always busy with the next one.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“She felt I was good at putting myself in another’s shoes but not so great at kicking off my own and having fun. Sometimes I’d get stuck in the other person for too long because that was easier than staying inside myself.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“We find ourselves in loss and we are who we are – vulnerable beings, like stripped starling chicks that fall naked from their nests and hope they’ll be picked up again.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“Als iemand dichtbij staat of ligt krijg ik het gevoel dat ik iets moet bekennen, dat ik mij moet verantwoorden voor mijn aanwezigheid...”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, De avond is ongemak

“People need small problems in order to feel bigger.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“I’d have preferred them to be open so that we could look at each other one more time, so that I could be sure I didn’t forget the colour of his eyes, so that he wouldn’t forget me.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“She knows life the way tourists know a village: they don’t know how to find the dark alleyways, the path forbidden to trespassers”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“I don’t want to feel any sadness, I want action; something to pierce my days, like bursting a blister with a pin so that the pressure is eased.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“We're all broken, that's how the light gets in.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Mijn lieve gunsteling

“We praten niet over alles wat we nooit meer zullen vergeten.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

“Everything that’s part of you is weightless and the things that are alien feel heavy.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“I was ten and stopped taking off my coat. That morning, Mum had covered us one by one in udder ointment to protect us from the cold.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“I learned that at first, death requires people to pay attention to small details – the way Mum checks her nails for dried-up bits of rennet from making cheese – to delay the pain.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“I’m beginning to have more and more doubts about whether I find God nice enough to want to go and talk to Him. I’ve discovered that there are two ways of losing your belief: some people lose God when they find themselves; some people lose God when they lose themselves. I think I’ll belong to that second group.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“Their hands were always searching for something and if you were no longer able to hold an animal or a person tenderly, it was better to let go and turn your attention to other useful things instead.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“Een dode kan niet kapot zijn, een dode is dood, niet meer dan dat. Diegene die achterblijft is kapot. In wel duizend stukjes.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Mijn lieve gunsteling

“It’s confusing, but grown-ups are often confusing because their heads work like a Tetris game and they have to arrange all their worries in the right”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“... je wilde dat het leven was zoals je verkeersexamen op de basisschool, waarbij er op elke rotonde en straathoek een moeder op een visstooltje zat en naar je glimlachte als je netjes je hand uitstak en je al je zenuwen en angsten kwijtraakte, want het was goed, welke afslag je ook los, zij zaten daar met ene zonnehoed op en een leesboek op schoot, zij zouden daar bijleven zitten, zijn bleven opkijken als je voorbijkwam, soms riepen ze iets over dat je een mooie bocht maakte, ja, een mooie bocht, of iets over de stevige wind die je altijd tegen had, maar meestal zwegen ze en glimlachten alleen maar en dan wist je dat je slaagkans groot was ...”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Mijn lieve gunsteling

“Don’t be so daft. You’re not going to die.’ She says it as though she’d begrudge it me, as though I’m not clever enough to die young.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“Every loss contains all previous attempts to hang on to something you didn’t want to lose but had to let go of anyway, from a marble bag filled with the most beautiful marbles and rare shooters, to my brother.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“Later I sometimes thought that this was when the emptiness began. It wasn’t because of Matthies’s death but those two days of Christmas that were given away in pans and empty Russian salad tubs.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“No one in the village liked to dwell: the crops might wither, and we only knew about the harvest that came from the land, not about things that grew inside ourselves. I breathed in Dad’s smoke so that his cares would become mine.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“Even the Big Bear from my favourite picture book, who takes down the moon every night for the Little Bear who is afraid of the dark, is hibernating.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening

“I don't love myself either, but that makes me love others more. I have so much love and at the same time so much hate that it grows over the edges of my body.”
― Lucas Rijneveld, My Heavenly Favorite

“Just normal,' Mum says, 'I'm just normal.'
No, I think to myself, my mum's anything but normal. Even the omelette she's making right now is anything but normal. There are bits of eggshell in it and it's stuck to the bottom of the frying pan, and both the white and the yolk have dried out. She's stopped using butter and she's forgotten the salt and pepper again.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, De avond is ongemak

“some people lose God when they find themselves; some people lose God when they lose themselves.”
― Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening