Olaf Olafsson > Quotes

“I had the impression that I was damned, even though all I had done was to be as God made me, and as I lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, I saw no difference between God’s justice and man’s injustice.”
― Olaf Olafsson, The Sacrament

“I do not speak with the tongues of angels, nor have my prayers ever moved mountains...and yet, despite everything, I still cling to the belief that if I do not have love, I am nothing”
― Olaf Olafsson, The Sacrament

“There was a misspelling on the headstone which the moss had not yet covered. We spoke of everything except for what was on our mind. When we left the graveyard, hand in hand, you asked: Why is it always our mistakes that linger in our memory?”
― Olaf Olafsson, The Sacrament

“The stars do flicker yet in my heaven your eyes shine brightest of all.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“Why is it always our mistakes that linger in our memory?”
― Olaf Olafsson, The Sacrament

“I do not speak with the tongues of angels, nor have my prayers ever moved mountains...and yet, despite everything, I still cling to the belief that if I do not have love, I am nothing.”
― Olaf Olafsson

“This doesn’t sound like she wrote it. Somehow it isn’t like her. Maybe the sentence is too long. Too formal. But then I remind myself that I last saw her half a century ago. Over half a century ago, I tell myself again, as if I have just discovered something that wasn’t self-evident. I get that sinking feeling and start to tremble slightly, since the obvious thought dawns on me as I stand here holding my teacup that, while the cup may not have changed, Miko is almost certainly a completely different person from who she was when I imagined us spending the rest of our lives together.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“It’s one thing to be an optimist and quite another to deceive oneself. The longer I stare up at those windows, the less able I am to avoid confronting the fact that something bad might have happened.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“I watched them drive away. The Citroën was bright green and jolted slightly. The sun went on shining.”
― Olaf Olafsson, The Sacrament

“I have a sense of anticipation in my chest, a burning anticipation that takes me by surprise and reminds me that not so long ago I was a young man.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“And then the name leaps out at me, the decades seem to melt away, and I am standing again in gentle rain outside the locked door, the morning I discovered that they had disappeared.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“Maybe I believed I was leaving behind the city and everything associated with it, maybe I thought that with time I could start over again. But she followed me like the books I packed into the box and the teacup I kept hold of on the plane, the one I left on the kitchen table this morning. The city and its memories, the joy, the sorrows, and the anger—and the love that has stood in the way of so much all these years.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“On my way here, I came to the realization that now is a good time for me to confront a few things I haven’t given much thought to in recent years or perhaps have avoided thinking about. Not so much because I have anything to feel ashamed of but because dwelling on the past can be time-consuming and unproductive.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“It’s a strange thing to say. And yet it hardly felt as if almost half a century has passed since we last saw each other, especially not after we had finished asking the usual polite but trivial questions and provided equally inconsequential answers.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“He used to say that breakfast resembles the first line of a haiku, it shows the way. Lunch is the second line and carries the momentum. The third line, then, is dinner, as it brings everything to a close.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch

“I find I have slowed my pace without realizing it. Having turned away from the river, I am now a stone’s throw from her house. And yet I don’t quite come to a halt and have stopped puzzling over what to say to her when we meet, stopped trying to find words that will bridge half a century.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“When she gave birth to a baby boy, Takahashi-san had already arranged for him to be taken immediately to a place for disabled children in Hiroshima.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“Yesterday she also said: “I was in a bad way for a long time.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“There are millions of people in London, I said to myself. Millions of men and women. But then after a moment another voice responded: There are also millions of stars in the sky, but there’s life on only one of them.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“Minutes become hours and a moment becomes an eternity. I am seventy-five years old, sitting on this bench feeding two little birds crumbs from the pastry I bought with my coffee. I am thinking about the knife on the table, my teacup, moonlight on raven hair. It’s as if time has stood still, as if nothing has happened in the half century that has passed.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart

“The word hibakusha appeared in the article,” she resumes. “The scientists talked about prejudice, explaining, for example, that radiation poisoning isn’t contagious and debunking other myths. But I didn’t feel any better. What they said about having children outweighed everything else.”
― Olaf Olafsson, Touch: The Inspiration for the Film, Explore the Complexities of the Human Heart