Status Updates From Tearing the Silence: On Bei...

“Why don’t these people say anything? Why do they only say phrases? They are far away, behind their masks. There must be something behind there, but I can’t recognize it. That was my first encounter with what I later on called small talk—a name for the whole system of not interfering with each other.” (241)

“My mother, sister, and I ended up in a town by the North Sea with my father’s sister at the end of 1945. The first time I saw an orange was in that town when a whole box of oranges washed on shore. They told me oranges were wonderful, and I wanted to taste one. It was full of salt water.” (201)

“Now she walks down the hill to go shopping, and my dad has to pick her up to carry the groceries back up the hill.” (83)