Abhilasha Singh

“How difficult it is to see even what’s in front of one’s eyes. All we possess is the present, and the present endlessly dissolves into the past.”

Excerpt From: Michael Frayn. “Copenhagen”
― Michael Frayn, Copenhagen

“You never had the slightest conception of what happens when bombs are dropped on cities. Even conventional bombs. None of you ever experienced it. Not a single one of you. I walked back from the centre of Berlin to the suburbs one night, after one of the big raids. No transport moving, of course. The whole city on fire. Even the puddles in the streets are burning. They’re puddles of molten phosphorus. It gets on your shoes like some kind of incandescent dog-muck—I have to keep scraping it off—as if the streets have been fouled by the hounds of hell. It would have made you laugh—my shoes keep bursting into flame. All around me, I suppose, there are people trapped, people in various stages of burning to death. And all I can think is, How will I ever get hold of another pair of shoes in times like these?”

Excerpt From: Michael Frayn. “Copenhagen”
― Michael Frayn, Copenhagen

“If you’re doing something you have to concentrate on you can’t also be thinking about doing it, and if you’re thinking about doing it then you can’t actually be doing it. Yes?”

Excerpt From: Michael Frayn. “Copenhagen”
― Michael Frayn, Copenhagen

“Not your view, I know—you’d be happy to describe what you were up to purely in differential equations if you could—”

Excerpt From: Michael Frayn. “Copenhagen”.”
― Michael Frayn, Copenhagen