Explore Book Quotes

“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.”

“Her long white fingers fluttered gently, like a tired butterfly, and Coraline shivered.”

“When I asked Herr Wedekind, the baker, why he had believed in National Socialism, he said, ‘Because it promised to solve the unemployment problem. And it did. But I never imagined what it would lead to. Nobody did.’ I thought I had struck pay dirt, and I said, ‘What do you mean, ‘what it would lead to,’ Herr Wedekind?’ ‘War,’ he said. ‘Nobody ever imagined it would lead to war.‘”

“Kitty Flaherty is joining the third form, along with her pet goat McGinty! ”

“Often I have thought: Won’t Govinda for once also take a step by himself, without me, out of his own soul?”

“Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time.”

The story begins at school where Janna-Berta and the other students and teachers are alarmed of a nuclear accident in the vicinity. She returns home. Her younger brother Uli is alone because the parents are away and the grandparents on vacation.

“Tears alone were sweet to me, for in my heart’s desire they had taken the place of my friend.”

“She didn’t know exactly how it all started, but it began soon after they had moved into this old building last spring. She hardly gave the first few occurrences a thought. Because Anders had torn off wallpaper throughout the apartment, revealing closets that had been nailed shut, everything seemed unsettled.”

“Tessa Kelly is a man-eater. When she sets her sights on you, she doesn’t just consume your heart, she goes for your soul.”