Adeline

“Je suis convaincu qu’un des objectifs de Verdun fut de se débarrasser de cette jeunesse allemande qui refusait l’ordre et la religion. On ne le sait pas assez et on ne comprend rien à la culture germanique si on ne considère pas le rapport à l’ordre et aux frustrations qu’il engendre. J’ai très vite su, grâce à la maestria de Goethe, pourquoi j’avais quitté Vienne pour l’Amérique, le pays de l’émancipation et des rêves accomplis.”
― Philippe Collin, Le Barman du Ritz

“In Amélie, the protagonist finds a tin box of childhood memorabilia in her wall, and though it just looks like a bunch of old shit, the extreme care with which it was curated and then hidden makes it clear it was precious to some person of the past and hence to Amélie, who needs, the film posits, to get a life. Adults watching this scene are often very moved. It brings back to them, I think, a time when the smallest things take on a significance that even the largest things later on down the line can’t match. To a child watching, however, I imagine there is just the ball-ache of being found out - it was such an excellent hiding place and such bad luck that Princess Diana had to go ahead and die at that very moment, and children love to hide things because they’re given no sanctuary.”
― Krystelle Bamford, Idle Grounds

“There are some people at whom one only has to glance for one’s throat to tighten and one’s eyes to fill with tears of emotion. These people make one feel as if a stronger memory of our former innocence remains in them, as if they were a freak of nature, not entirely battered by the Fall. Perhaps they are messengers, like the servants who find a lost prince who’s unaware of his origins, show him the robe that he wore in his native country, and remind him how to return home.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead