Lou > Lou's Quotes

“Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment

“Man hat mich vergessen. Ich habe in einer dunklen Ecke gestanden und alles gehört. Man konnte nicht wissen, dass ich noch da war, aber man hat mich vergessen. Alle sind fort, und ich gehe alleine nach Hause - es ist nicht weit, aber es ist meine eigene Schuld.”
― Irmgard Keun, After Midnight

“In der Luft zitterte noch Schreien, man hörte es nicht mehr, man sah es nur noch. Wir sahen und fühlten es alle und waren für eine Sekunde vereint in Trauer und Angst. Denn es war getötet worden, und wir sind dabei gewesen.”
― Irmgard Keun, After Midnight

“Ich habe die Menschen geliebt, länger als ein Jahrzehnt habe ich mir die Finger wundgeschrieben und den Kopf leergedacht, um sie vor dem Wahnsinn der hereinbrechenden Barbarei zu warnen. Eine Maus, die durch Piepsen eine Lawine aufhalten will. Die Lawine ist gekommen und hat alles begraben, die Maus hat ausgepiepst. (...) Ich war ein geistreicher und witziger Journalist. Man kann weder hier noch im Ausland ein geistreicher und witziger Journalist sein, wenn einem ewig die Schreie aus den deutschen Konzentrationslagern in den Ohren gellen. Zu viel an Grausamkeit ist geschehen. Ein böser Tag der Rache wird kommen, und die Rache wird nicht göttlich, sondern noch grausamer, noch menschlicher, noch unmenschlicher sein. Und auf die grausame Rache, die ich gleichzeitig wünsche und nicht wünsche, wird wieder eine grausame Rache folgen müssen - was jetzt in Deutschland begann, scheint hoffnungslos ohne Ende. Ein bluttriefendes Riesenrad, dreht Deutschland sich um sich selbst, weiter, immer weiter durch die nächsten Jahrzehnte - beinahe gleichgültig, welche Stelle des Rades gerade oben, welche unten ist.”
― Irmgard Keun, After Midnight

“If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has this pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“If you don't understand, ask questions. If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“Alexa and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not understand why people like him who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for for choice and certainty.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“...there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“To have money, it seemed, was to be consumed by money.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“Le cose brutte che non dici a nessuno diventano cani che ti mangiano la testa di notte mentre dormi.”
― Elena Ferrante, La vita bugiarda degli adulti

“Non riuscivo più a essere innocente, dietro i pensieri c'erano altri pensieri, l'infanzia era finita.”
― Elena Ferrante, La vita bugiarda degli adulti

“Ci salutammo alla funicolare e da allora non l'ho più rivisto. Non osai fare domande su Roberto, non chiesi se Vittoria gli aveva parlato di me, se gli aveva raccontato i fatti di casa mia. Dissi solo, vergognandomi:
"Mi sento brutta, di cattivo carattere, e tuttavia vorrei essere amata".
Ma lo dissi tardi, in un soffio, quando lui già mi dava le spalle.”
― Elena Ferrante, La vita bugiarda degli adulti