Simon Tolkien > Quotes

“You can't win because of the guns," said Adam with a sigh. "Machine guns, mortars, field guns, howitzers: it doesn't matter how much courage soldiers have, how much will; flesh and blood can't pass through bullets and shells, or at least not in sufficient numbers to have any effect. The guns win in the end and they always will. Not us, not the Germans - the guns.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“And he needed to be able to look at himself in the mirror without having to turn away - he couldn't bear to be less than he hoped he was. It was a virtue and a fault that he would carry with him all his life.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“...his endearment fell on deaf ears like a stone dropping into an empty well.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“Jewish blood comes from the mother, not the father. Theo’s a Catholic like his mother”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“Their lives hanging in the balance, dependent on what was about to happen to them inside this palace at the end of the sea.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“I’m no Jew and nor is my son,” he said, spitting out the words. “We’re Americans.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“There’s nobody whom I admire more in this world than those who fight for justice even though they’re doomed to fail.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“Michael and Elena lived in a perfectly separated alignment like two heavenly bodies orbiting each other with an equal gravity. They loved each other with a happy superficiality, and so when conflict arose, as it had now, they lacked the tools to find resolution and instead crashed against each other until they were spent.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“Because the persecution is still going on, you know. In Germany, Hitler is taking away their rights, shipping them off to concentration camps. There’s one near Munich called Dachau where they’re worked and starved to death. The SS beat them with clubs and hang them from iron posts if they try to resist.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“Those are all lies, filthy lies,” he spluttered angrily. “Yes, that’s what Stalin says too,” Father Laurence continued smoothly on. “‘Lies, lies!’ he sneers, but he is the one who is lying, and on a scale that no one before now could ever have imagined, because he’s realized that the more colossal the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. No ruler could sell grain when his people are starving, and so they can’t be starving. It’s as simple as that. And so the peasants carry on dying without their deaths even being acknowledged. The shameless audacity of the performance is truly diabolical.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“It dumbfounded her, this cathedral with no God. Its grand impersonal immensity dried up what hope she had left, and she bowed her head and began to cry.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“Because it was the ugliness that drew him to her: it told him that she had suffered and been ruined by the war just like him. For her the damage was visible, whereas for him it was hidden beneath the surface. But they were still the same—casualties, walking wounded, carrying on without hope of recovery, separated from the rest of the population by an experience that they could neither share nor explain.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“he turned his back on the chosen people because he felt chosen himself. By whom, he couldn’t say. Not God, not Christ—it was a source of lasting sadness to Elena that her husband showed no interest in her religion. America, perhaps—Michael Sterling was not a religious man, but he had an unswerving faith in his adopted country.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“rise of totalitarianism abroad. Now, once again, the Western democracies face the challenge of a Fascist power launching a barbaric war of aggression and must decide whether to go down the road of appeasement or resistance. Now, more than ever, is the time for us to learn from our history.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“You could not stand idly by and acquiesce while innocent people were stripped of their rights and imprisoned and attacked with mustard gas from the sky, just because they were Jewish or African or believed in freedom and justice. You had to stand up and be counted, and it seemed to Theo that this was what each athlete was pledging to do as the band struck up “The Internationale” and they began to march around the stadium, singing with their hands held over their fast-beating hearts.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“Power is what he wants. Always power. And no one can stop him getting it because he’s the one supplying the arms. The Republic needs him to survive, and so they’ve done a deal with the Devil. And we all know what happens when you do that.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“He calls himself a revolutionary, but he hates revolution, just like he hates freedom. Power is what he wants. Always power. And no one can stop him getting it because he’s the one supplying the arms.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“changed,”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“The exploitation and the suffering are at their worst now because this Depression we’re in is the death knell of capitalism,” said Esmond, leaning forward as he warmed to his theme. “It’s like a rabid dog. It gets vicious and poisonous when it’s dying, which is why it turns into Fascism.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“No one was free. People were subjected to power or enthralled by power. For now, and as it ever shall be. Theo had learned that much. He stayed in the shadows as”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“All that hope, all that belief that he could make a difference in the world, reduced to dust in six short months.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“I hate that the Church is so political and takes the side of the rich against the poor.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“European ghettos are pouring their dregs into our great country. The dregs of humanity—you know who I am referring to!”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“He needed to stop being angry, he realized. It wasn’t Sir John’s fault that he didn’t understand the war—it was impossible to understand it unless you went there and saw it and heard it and smelt it for yourself, and even that might not be enough if you were just a visitor, a tourist able to return home when you felt you’d had enough…”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land

“Trave could have flown to Paris, but he had opted instead to go on the ferry to Le Havre and then drive across Normandy to Rouen, and now, standing on deck, feeling the sea spray flying up into his face, blown on the back of a big southwesterly wind, Trave felt pleased with his decision. He disliked aeroplanes. Perhaps it was the memory of the bombers flying high across the skies of southern England during the war or just that he liked to physically travel his journeys, measuring the passage of earth or water beneath his feet. Whatever the reason, he always found an excuse to avoid air travel if he possibly could, and he enjoyed ferries or trains all the more because he wasn’t up in the air.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Inheritance: A Novel

“Show me the evidence!” Theo demanded. “You know I can’t do that. You’ll just have to take my word for it.” “How can I when it makes no sense? You’re the cleverest person I know, Esmond, and I don’t think you believe this nonsense any more than I do. You’re just saying there’s a conspiracy because it justifies what you’re doing, and then you try to drag as many poor fools into it as you can—”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“Are states going to set up the terrible precedent of bowing before force? . . . It is international morality at stake . . . It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“International Brigades—Theo turned the words over in his mind and felt their romance kindling a fire in his heart. Men from different countries and different walks of life coming together to defeat Fascism.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Room of Lost Steps

“It’s capitalism’s fault. Owners and workers are caught in its web. One must exploit the other—that is essential to their relationship—and so they become alienated not just from each other but from their own humanity.”
― Simon Tolkien, The Palace at the End of the Sea

“It seemed sometimes as if he was two different people, one a product of his background and class and the other the person he might have been if he had been born outside of their confines.”
― Simon Tolkien, No Man's Land