L. Annette Binder > Quotes

“He’s not coming back,” Ushi pushed her cup aside. “People leave and they don’t come back. My Jens is gone and my Jürgen, too.” Her voice quavered. “They’ve wrecked the world, these men, and still they’re not done. They’d take the sky if they could. They’d take the air we breathe, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”
― L. Annette Binder, The Vanishing Sky

“Victory was inevitable, they said, victory was a given, but the ladies knew better. Their boys went away, every day they left and they didn’t come back or they came back broken and what use was victory then when everything was lost.”
― L. Annette Binder, The Vanishing Sky

“They should have hung their heads, but people didn’t feel shame anymore. They lied and after a while they believed the lies they told, and this is how it went.”
― L. Annette Binder, The Vanishing Sky

“You’ve got to do the right thing. You’ve got to use your mind,” she said. “That’s what the real God wants. People should do the right thing but they never do.”
― L. Annette Binder, The Vanishing Sky

“Things changed and the mind adjusted, and it was an act of will to remember anything at all.”
― L. Annette Binder, The Vanishing Sky

“Sickness brought disorder; it brought fevers and sweats and sour smells. It stopped the clock. Order was the only remedy. Order was a repudiation of the effects of the sickness. In an orderly sickroom, the sun rose again and set. The linens were ironed and smelled of vinegar, and meals arrived at noon and at six exactly, and even if the patient ate nothing, it was enough to see the plates and the silverware set just so. There was a time for reading and for sleeping and for bringing in the trays, a time for opening the curtains and closing them again, and the order worked its way into the patient just like medicine.”
― L. Annette Binder, The Vanishing Sky