Sophie > Sophie's Quotes

“What capacity could have renovated your brain, endowing you with new, specialised skills as well as inducing specific codnitive deficits? This exotic mental ability is reading.”
― Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

“Reading is, with friendship, one of the surest contributions to the work of grieving. It helps us, more generally, to grieve for the limitations of our life, the limitations of the human condition.”
― Didier Anzieu, Le Corps De L'oeuvre

“I’m a visibly Muslim woman from Kenya, I understand that the world is very hostile toward a lot of the parts that make up my identity. I’m not a historian, I studied journalism but I’m not a practicing journalist. What I care about is not contributing to erasure or overlooking or forgiving it.”
― Khadija Abdalla Bajaber

“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

“If you're Native American and you pray to the wolves, you're a savage. If you're African and you pray to your ancestors, you're a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that's just common sense.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

“I was blessed with another trait I inherited from my mother, her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma, but I don't hold onto the trauma. I never let the memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think too much about the ass kicking your mom gave you or the ass kicking that life gave you, you’ll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It’s better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on. You’ll have a few bruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s ok. But after a while, the bruises fade and they fade for a reason. Because now, it’s time to get up to some shit again.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

“Eine Frau wollte ein dickes kluges Buch schreiben.
Sie kaufte sich einen Stapel Papier, fünfzig neue Bleistifte
und einen scharfen Bleistiftspitzer.
Ihr Mann und ihre Kinder sollten von heute an nur noch flüstern
und auf den Zehen gehen.
Sie legte das Papier zurecht und spitzte einen Bleistift. Dabei dachte
sie über den ersten Satz nach.
Sie spitzte noch einen Bleistift und dachte weiter über den ersten
Satz nach.
Sie spitzte den dritten Bleistift und dachte immer noch über
den ersten Satz nach.
Die Frau spitzte die fünfzig Bleistifte zu winzigen Stummeln,
und sie spitzte noch sechstausendfünfhundertundzwölf Bleistifte kurz und klein.
Dazu brauchte sie drei Wochen.
Den ersten Satz hatte sie noch nicht geschrieben, aber sie war jetzt
Weltmeisterin im Bleistiftspitzen.
Es stand in der Zeitung.”
― Wölfel, Ursula

“And that's what life's all about at the end of the day. Doing something you're okay with that pays enough that you can take care of the people you want to take care of.”
― Alexis Hall, Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake

“It was actually shaping up to be a fairly nice evening. Not exactly warm because, y'know, England, but the sky was swirly blue and a pale silver orb was hanging in it. I'd seen pictures of such a thing on the internet and I think it was the sun.”
― Alexis Hall, How to Blow It with a Billionaire

“And," I went on, "I will always love you—"
Nik, in the fashion of most tragically heterosexual men, wasn't very good at emotions. Even when he needed them. He blushed. "So gay."
"So gay," I agreed, laughing. "Although I heard there's been some new legislation, so now the straights are allowed to have feelings too.”
― Alexis Hall, How to Belong with a Billionaire

“What we want and what we need and what we think is best aren’t
always the same.”
― Alexis Hall, A Lady for a Duke

“Children are stronger than you think. Besides, they haven't had years and years of silly people filling their heads with silly ideas about what you're meant to do or say or be.”
― Alexis Hall, A Lady for a Duke

“There was at least one universal truth I knew and he didn´t : Everything was better under a duvet”
― Alexis Hall, How to Blow It with a Billionaire

“Life is short, have dessert first.”
― Joan Smith

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
― Primo Levi

“Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.”
― Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

“People

Some people talk and talk
and never say a thing.
Some people look at you
and birds begin to sing.

Some people laugh and laugh
and yet you want to cry.
Some people touch your hand
and music fills the sky.”
― Charlotte Zolotow

“To have the capacity for happiness was, presumably, to be able to envisage a future in which happiness could have its place.”
― Marghanita Laski, Little Boy Lost

“Ich versuche mir vorzustellen, wie es wäre, wenn mir dies Erleben zum ersten Mal auf solche Art zuteil geworden wäre. Ich muß den Gedanken abbremsen, so was ist nicht vorstellbar. Eines ist klar: Wäre an dem Mädchen irgendwann in Friedenszeiten durch einen herumstreunenden Kerl die Notzucht verübt worden, wäre hinterher das übliche Friedensbrimborium von Anzeige, Protokoll, Vernehmung, ja von Verhaftung und Gegenüberstellung, Zeitungsbericht und Nachbarngetue gewesen – das Mädel hätte anders reagiert, hätte einen anderen Schock davongetragen. Hier aber handelt es sich um ein Kollektiv-Erlebnis, vorausgewußt, viele Male vorausbefürchtet – um etwas, das den Frauen links und rechts und nebenan zustieß, das gewissermaßen dazu gehörte. Diese kollektive Massenform der Vergewaltigung wird auch kollektiv überwunden werden. Jede hilft jeder, indem sie darüber spricht, sich Luft macht, der anderen Gelegenheit gibt sich Luft zu machen, das Erlittene auszuspeien. Was natürlich nicht ausschließt, das feinere Organismen als diese abgebrühte Berliner Göre daran zerbrechen oder doch auf Lebenszeit einen Knacks davontragen.”
― Marta Hillers, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

“And so the balance is maintained: well-fed nations wallow in neurosis and excesses, while people plagued with suffering ... may rely on numbness and apathy to help see them through”
― Marta Hillers, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary

“How wrong to have been so negative, how wrong to have been so gloomy, how wrong to have run away from life, how wrong to have said no, again and again, instead of yes.”
― Jonathan Franzen

“Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me.”
― Elif Shafak

“There is always a gift in any challenge.”
― Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing

“Denn ich ohne Bücher bin nicht ich.”
― Christa Wolf, Lesen und Schreiben: Neue Sammlung : Essays, Aufsätze, Reden (Sammlung Luchterhand ; 295)

“Between killing and dying there's a third way: live”
― Christa Wolf, Kassandra

“Wann - wenn nicht jetzt Wann soll man leben wenn nicht in der Zeit die einem gegeben ist”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“...no lie is too obvious for the people to believe if it accommodates their secret wish to believe it.”
― Christa Wolf, Medea

“I did not yet know that not to feel is never a step forward, scarcely a relief.”
― Christa Wolf, Cassandra

“Das Ungenügen mit sich selbst ist der eigentliche Stachel.”
― Christa Wolf, Kein Ort. Nirgends. / Der Schatten eines Traumes. / Karoline von Günderrode - ein Entwurf.