Jerry

“Later, Heinrich Boll suggested that such experiences of collective uprooting are at the origin of the German craving for travel: a sense of being unable to stay anywhere, a constant need to be somewhere else. In terms of social conditioning, this would make the ebb and flow of the population bombed out of their homes rather like a rehearsal for initiation into the mobile society that would form in the decades after the catastrophe.”
― W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction

“With him she felt no embarrassment, not even if they peed together to get rid of the stones, and since her whole life she had been told that she was like someone from the land of the moon, it seemed to her that she had finally met someone from her own land, and that was the principal thing in life, which she had never had.”
― Milena Agus, From the Land of the Moon

“When the mistral blew we put on bandannas and hurried up to save the plants, setting them against walls or covering them with plastic, while some of the more delicate ones we brought into the house until the wind stopped blowing, sweeping everything away.”
― Milena Agus, From the Land of the Moon

“He's surprised: But how do you know it? I say: It's on the way to Santiago de Compostela. He asks if I've never been there. I tell him no, never, but I read about it in a book and remembered it. He makes fun of me, saying: I was sure you were a boy like that, one who knows things just because you read it in a book. He then becomes despondent and adds: But what's worse is that if someone asked both of us, I'm pretty sure you would be able to talk about it way better than I could.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me