The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

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The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 · rating details · 371 ratings · 52 reviews

"We wear Aran Sweaters and Lederhosen. We are forbidden from speaking English. We are trapped in a language war. We are the Speckled People." In one of the most original memoirs to emerge in years, Hugo Hamilton tells the haunting story of his German-Irish childhood in 1950s Dublin. His Gaelic-speaking, Irish nationalist father rules the home with tyranny, while his German...more

Paperback, 304 pages

Published April 27th 2004 by Harper Perennial (first published January 1st 2003)

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Jun 25, 2008 Suzanne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, irish-writing, nonfiction, travel

My daughter recommended this book to me and it is a memoir of Hugo Hamilton's life growing up in Ireland. His father was fanatically "Irish" and his mother was "German". Hence the title. The father would only allow Irish (Gaelic) spoken in the home and was rabidly anti-British. The mother spoke German. This memoir of two boys growing up in Ireland makes for riveting reading. It gives one a very different view of Ireland than you would get reading Frank McCourt or Roddy Doyle. Highly recommended....more

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Mar 21, 2011 Margot rated it 2 of 5 stars

I don't really know what to think about this book. It has been hightly recommended to me by a couple of people who actually used to share my type of books so I was really expecting a great experience. But I have been quite disappointed. I don't know if it is the childish point of view (and language level) that lowed the experience but I didn't enjoy it as much as I was supposed to. Well, I truly believe that the time you read a book is a huge factor in your appreciation of it and with all the wo...more

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Jan 31, 2008 minnie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

I really liked this memoir of a boy growing up in fifties Ireland with a german mother and Irish father.As in a lot of memoirs I read, the father was stubborn and misguided and the mother an understanding saint of a woman. The writer never faltered from telling his story from a childs point of view. The fathers belief in a future Ireland where only the Irish language was spoken, forbade his children to speak English or even listen to it spoken.The children were ostracised from their peers and ma...more

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Jan 12, 2009 Faith rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2006, biography

The Speckled People - one of the Irish autobiographies I found in Ireland this summer. Hugo Hamilton is an acclaimed Irish novelist, and in this book he brings alive his German-Irish childhood in the 50s. It is not easy to belong to the speckled people, the people who are different, the people who are neither Irish nor German, but just speckled. Especially after the Second World War it's not easy to be speckled German.

The book is very touching and real (human). Hamilton manages the child's pers...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Aleesha rated it 1 of 5 stars

Awful, Awful and just beyond awful. Maybe I am just not a very intellectual person like the rest of the people reading this book . I normally finish a good book within 2 hours but with this one I spent 2 weeks because I found it physically impossible to pick it up and torture my own brain.

This book sounds more like the rambling of a 5 year old child. Have no idea what the publisher and editor were thinking.
Some problems:
1. The author has no consistency, no clear theme established in any chapter...more

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May 03, 2012 Sushmita rated it 3 of 5 stars

It is not a very breezy kind of novel and is a story recited through the eyes of a boy. The story depicts the dilemma of a boy who is caught between multi nationalist parents and society and how he gets out of it. His odd childhod wherein he has to encounter a fiercely nationalist Irish father and German mom. Both the father and the mother are again caught in their homesickness. His mother's for Germany, his father's for an unavailable Ireland and the boy for a home and homeland of his own.The s...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Polina Kolatsi added it · review of another edition

In this deeply autobiographical novel Hamilton tells the story of a "speckled" -half Irish - half German- family in Dublin Ireland, trying to build their lives and home following the end of the Second World War. The narrator - and author- speaks to us as the oldest son of a German mother and an idealist and often purist Irish Catholic father who opposes the “anglophication” of Ireland and makes obsessive efforts to reinstate Irish as Ireland's native language, in the aftermath of the Irish Civil...more

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Apr 22, 2010 Maol Mhuire O'Duinnin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir-autobiography, things-irish

Intriguing and heart-breaking account of Hamilton's childhood in 1950s Ireland being pulled in many different directions. His father is Irish and a stickler about his children learning Irish Gaelic in defiance of the increasingly encroaching English mainstream society in Ireland, including the language. Hamilton, however, is forced to learn English in school and he and his siblings are made fun of because they speak Gaelic by their Irish schoolmates. They are also antagonized for being half-Germ...more

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Jan 16, 2010 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hugo Hamilton erzählt von seiner Kindheit in Irland mit einer deutschen Mutter und einem irischen Vater, der seinen Kindern verbietet, englisch zu sprechen. Man kann sich vorstellen, dass das für ihn und seine Geschwister nicht immer einfach war, denn in den Fünfzigern waren die Nazis noch recht frisch im Gedächtnis (und Kinder können ja so grausam sein) und auch irisch war nicht mehr wirklich üblich.

Das Buch ist auch ungewöhnlich in dem Sinne, dass es wirklich wie von einem Kind geschrieben wir...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Marleen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I rated this book 3.5 stars.

In this memoir Hugo Hamilton tells the story of his youth. Born in Dublin in the 1950’s with a German mother and an Irish, nationalistic, father his upbringing was anything but conventional. Because of his father’s strong and uncompromising views on being Irish and resurrecting the Irish identity it was forbidden to speak English in their house. While the rest of Dublin lived in an English speaking world, Hugo and his siblings grew up speaking German and Irish at home...more I rated this book 3.5 stars.

In this memoir Hugo Hamilton tells the story of his youth. Born in Dublin in the 1950’s with a German mother and an Irish, nationalistic, father his upbringing was anything but conventional. Because of his father’s strong and uncompromising views on being Irish and resurrecting the Irish identity it was forbidden to speak English in their house. While the rest of Dublin lived in an English speaking world, Hugo and his siblings grew up speaking German and Irish at home, with punishment awaiting anyone who dared to bring English into their home. They are “the speckled people”, partly from Ireland and partly from somewhere else.

“We are the brack children. Brack, homemade Irish bread with German raisins.”

Because of his father’s views on being and speaking Irish the family found themselves outsiders in the neighbourhood where they lived. Having a German mother at a time when World War II was still a very recent memory only made things worse for the Hamilton children. Teasing, bullying and being left on the fringes of the world they lived in were the result. And there is so much the children don’t understand, things that will only become clear when they are older (and mostly after the story in this book has ended); the past his father is ashamed of and trying to hide, and the pain his mother caries with her always as a result of things she witnessed, was exposed to and had to endure during Hitler’s reign in Germany. This is a family that doesn’t really fit in anywhere. Cultures clash, differences confuse and all young Hugo wants is to be the same as anybody else, to not to be called a Nazi and treated like an outcast.

In many was this was a fascinating book. It was interesting to read about Ireland in the fifties and sixties, and the composition of this family made this into a unique story. Up until fairly recently foreigners were a rarity in Ireland and I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like to be one in Dublin during those days, never mind being a German so shortly after the war. And while I’m all for raising children bi-lingual, the set up in this book, with the children not being allowed to speak the language everybody else around them was using, smacks of child-cruelty.

I had a difficult time with the way in which this story was told though. Although the story was obviously written with hindsight by an adult author, the language and images used are those of the child at the time the events take place. This means that a lot is not said or explained. An awful lot of what must have been happening is left unsaid because the child Hugo didn’t understand what was going on. This means that the reader has to read between the lines and draw their own conclusions. Was the father just misguided and overzealous in his determination to only allow Irish in his house or was he actually a cruel man? Was his mother a loving and supportive creature, or was she weak and ignoring problems when she should have been able to deal with them and maybe protect her children better? These questions weren’t answered for me while I was reading the book, and now that I’ve read the last page, I’m still not sure. I will say though that I admire the way the author seemed to have gone with complete honesty and didn’t try to make his younger self look perfect. In fact, at times he seems to actively dislike the person he was back then.

On the other hand, there were some observations that I did recognise and love, like:

“My mother says you can’t be sure in Ireland if people say things with admiration or not. Irish people are good at saying things in between admiration and accusation between envy and disdain.”

And while this book may have been published in 2003, with the story being set in the 1950’s, some things are as true now as they were back then. In fact, the following statement seems to have real relevance these days:

“Irish people were so afraid of being poor that they spent all their money, while German people were so afraid of being poor that they saved up every penny.”

Overall I would call this a powerful story which, unfortunately, was told in a way that just didn’t work very well for me.
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Nov 19, 2011 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: librarybooks

‘When you’re small you can inherit a secret without knowing what it is.’

In ‘The Speckled People’, Hugo Hamilton writes, from a child’s perspective, of his Irish childhood. He writes of growing up in a home where the languages spoken were the Irish of his nationalist father and the German of his mother. English was forbidden by his father, who was so obsessed with trying to hold onto his linguistic and cultural heritage that he would not do business with anyone who could not pronounce his Irish n...more ‘When you’re small you can inherit a secret without knowing what it is.’

In ‘The Speckled People’, Hugo Hamilton writes, from a child’s perspective, of his Irish childhood. He writes of growing up in a home where the languages spoken were the Irish of his nationalist father and the German of his mother. English was forbidden by his father, who was so obsessed with trying to hold onto his linguistic and cultural heritage that he would not do business with anyone who could not pronounce his Irish name (Ó hUrmoltaigh) correctly.

‘Everybody else was in the wrong country and couldn’t rescue us.’

Hamilton and his siblings grew up in Dublin during the 1950s and 1960s. His mother, Irmgard Kaiser, left Germany after World War II to go on a pilgrimage to Ireland. She stayed in Ireland, and married Jack Hamilton (who had renamed himself Sean Ó hUrmoltaigh). Jack Hamilton dedicated his life to the anti-British, nationalist cause and particularly to the rehabilitation of the Irish language. His father, who had served and died in the British Navy, was largely (but not entirely) removed from the family record.

The children who mostly dominate the story are Franz, Johannes and Maria, although other siblings are mentioned. It is Johannes who tells this story, and while he signals a future name change, the actual change is not discussed.

‘When I grow up I'll run away from my story, too. I have things I want to forget, so I'll change my name and never come back. ‘

Writing an account from a child’s perspective must be challenging for any adult: reading an account written from a child’s perspective has advantages and disadvantages. A child can recount what is seen, observed and experienced without necessarily understanding and interpreting the context. A child’s account is immediate, whereas distance and age often provide interpretational filters. So, while I enjoyed reading Hugo’s account of his childhood, I wanted at times to read his adult interpretation of events. But, it’s a memoir rather than a biography and the child Hugo’s perspective of the issues of identity and belonging, and the baggage of culture and language are worth reading and thinking about.

‘The Speckled People’ is a careful return to a complex childhood full of challenges and secrets, overshadowed by present and past personal, national and international conflict. And of all the images in this book, the ones that come first to mind involve the dog that barks at the waves. For me it’s a powerful image.

‘Maybe your country is only a place that you make up in your own mind.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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Oct 28, 2012 Persephone Abbott rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I found at the end the story quite moving. The death of the father dispersing the grandiose fantasy of great future world that the parents created for their children. All parents create some kind of safety net for their children based upon their own childhood traumas. The German mother, having fled the harassment of the Nazi regime and coping with her own vulnerability as a professional woman who was sexually assaulted, certainly tries to provide the humor and love for everyone in the family whi...more I found at the end the story quite moving. The death of the father dispersing the grandiose fantasy of great future world that the parents created for their children. All parents create some kind of safety net for their children based upon their own childhood traumas. The German mother, having fled the harassment of the Nazi regime and coping with her own vulnerability as a professional woman who was sexually assaulted, certainly tries to provide the humor and love for everyone in the family while married to a man who only wanted one identity, that of an Irishman in an Irish world without the British. The father's fanatical nationalism blinds him to the isolation that he imposes on his children. The children grow up wearing different clothing, and speaking different languages while forbidden to speak English. They suffer, are persecuted and inherit prejudice as apparel for righteousness until it all disappears one day and they are left trying to find home in their own country.

I liked this book much more than I anticipated. However, despite my avid interest in the first half, I have to admit the second half was a bit tedious. I thought the material could have been reduced a bit, but then again I thought no it couldn't have been reduced because of the mother's story line interspersed throughout the novel. The childlike language used to tell the tale was wonderful: to the point, and emotional without being overly sentimental. Again, half way through I wondered if the language was going to evolve with the growth of the narrator. This didn't happen. Maybe it could have or maybe not. Still, the subject matter of what language you speak or don't speak forming your identity, the worship of other icons than the norm around you, and the secretly fitting in when not being allowed to secretly fit in are themes that basically are those of immigrants. Yet interestingly the immigrants here in this book were (aside from the mother)native born people. It is then that this memoir takes on the slight telling tones of an abusive home, a loving home intending to provide the best and yet unsuccessful. (less)

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Dec 05, 2012 Iva rated it 4 of 5 stars

This excellent memoir never strayed from a child's observations of his life in Ireland in the 1950's. There have been many tyrannical fathers in memoirs (and fiction) but typically they are not obsessed with the Gaelic language. The father takes it to lengths not possible to imagine: not allowing his children to speak English, using their Irish names at all times, and trying to convince others that Irish is the true language and English should be abolished in all of Ireland. Then there is the Ge...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Ryan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The language is soft and gentle, and the descriptions are from a child's perspective. The combination makes the tyranny of the father even worse, the passivity of the mother more distressing, the fun and cakes slightly ironic.

The story of the father is interesting. He was nationalistic to the extreme and only allowed Irish - or German, since his wife was German and it was not English - to be spoken, but his children lived in a world where English was spoken by so many. I respected his belief th...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Friederike Knabe rated it 5 of 5 stars

I found The Speckled People after encountering a fascinating article by Hugo Hamilton on the "Loneliness of Being German". Similar to the article, the book immediately struck a chord with me. Those living within and without their own language will find a special connection to this book. Language as the identification of "home" and "country" and "language wars" are explored here in a rather exceptional way - through the voice and outlook of a growing child. Like a patchwork quilt the vignette cha...more I found The Speckled People after encountering a fascinating article by Hugo Hamilton on the "Loneliness of Being German". Similar to the article, the book immediately struck a chord with me. Those living within and without their own language will find a special connection to this book. Language as the identification of "home" and "country" and "language wars" are explored here in a rather exceptional way - through the voice and outlook of a growing child. Like a patchwork quilt the vignette chapters of the book come together for the reader to form an exquisitely drawn portrait. Hamilton's family is pictured against the backdrop of their Irish reality of poverty and want in the fifties and sixties. Complexities are accentuated by his dual identity as a child of an Irish nationalist father and a German mother who left Germany after the war.

The Speckled People is an intimately personal chronicle of his youth. His use of the language of a child has advantages and challenges. On the one hand, experiences can be conveyed in a direct and innocent way. Johannes (Hugo) has not yet learned to query all he observes: "When you're small you know nothing". He is a sensitive and perceptive child who intuits that there are more untold dramas in the family. "You can inherit a secret without even knowing what it is." On the other hand, it may be difficult to maintain the language as the boy's capacity to analyze and reflect becomes more pronounced with age. Hamilton succeeds admirably in keeping his style consistent even where he integrates numerous events from the wider world as they become relevant to the young boy. As you settle into his style, the narrative becomes deeply absorbing.

The experiences of life under Nazi rule as part of an anti-Nazi family, continue to haunt his mother. Her painful memories are conveyed to the son in small doses, like selected scenes from a black and white movie in which she had a part. Nonetheless, she is homesick for her native country and all things German. Books, souvenirs and toys arrive regularly resulting in outbursts of happy laughter. Johannes records his mother's mood swings expressed through either laughter or primarily mental withdrawal and silence.

His father feels more Irish than anybody around them. He insists on preserving Irish culture and on "freeing" the Irish people from British influences. His children become "his weapon" against the enemy. He forbids the family to speak English. The Irish language has to be protected even if it means losing business. This can mean that cheques are not accepted from people who cannot spell Ó hUrmoltaigh - Hamilton in Irish. The language is your home, "your country is your language", he insists - it identifies who you are. At the same time, the children tend to "live" in German as their mother has difficulties speaking Irish. With English the preferred language around them, the pressure on them to speak German and Irish at home sets them apart from other people in Dublin at the time. The children suffer from this enforced isolation. The neighbourhood bullies, responding to their otherness and German identity call them "Nazi", "Hitler" or "Eichmann". They attack them whenever the opportunity arises. While Johannes repeats to himself and to his mother "I am not a Nazi", he does not defend himself against the assaults. One of the rules of the house is to adopt a form of pacifist resistance, the "silent negative "and not to become part of the "fist people". As Johannes grows up, he understandably rebels increasingly against these strictures. In the end, he discovers his own way out of all the identify confusion, his anger and pain.

The Speckled People is a memoir like no other I am aware of. While Hamilton chronicles his childhood and growing up, themes and issues beyond the personal play a fundamental role. In particular his exploration of the complexities of "language" as "home" and "country" gives this book added richness and depth.(less)

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Aug 14, 2010 Dawn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

An unusual book - parts of it I found extremely boring and bland, but other parts were interesting, funny and enlightening, and for sheer originality I give it 4 stars. It is written in an almost childlike voice which is refreshing.

The author made me love his German mother, but I grew to detest his fiercely patriotic Irish father fairly early on because he made his family's life a misery through pointless and futile Irish nationalism, causing confusion and anger. Although his father apologised,...more

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May 15, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a beautiful book. Genuinely touching, and authentic in the way it deals with human experience. A memoir written through the perspective of Hamilton's child self using deceptive language that is rich in poetry, metaphor and complex modalities. He describes difficult family relationships with his Irish nationalist father who refuses to let his children speak English, and with subtle shifts of focus, shows us the harrowing experiences of his mother in wartime Germany. He gives insight into...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hamilton has produced a marvelous memoir about his childhood in Ireland in the early 1950's and '60's. Told from his childish perspective, he is punished for speaking English in the house by his devoutly Irish father, while his German mother tries to soothe the rough edges of his father's harshness. Babies are born, school creates its own set of problems, and Hamilton's desciptions paint a portrait of the Irish ways. Well worth reading.

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Feb 12, 2012 Gail rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a memoir of a childhood in Ireland, the son of a German immigrant mother, whose family lived a quiet anti-Nazi existence during WWII and a father who is so Irish that he would not allow English to be spoken in his home and didn't want to do business or interact with government if it was conducted in English. It was a thoughtful and enjoyable book.

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Feb 10, 2012 A. Mary Murphy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: irish-non-fiction

This memoir did not engage me right from the start, and I think that may partly be the result of its departures from genre. Ultimately, those are the very things that give the book its depth. Hamilton's narrator is supposedly a child, and he does relate things in a fragmentary way as a child would, but his sophistication is not the accidental sophistication of the child. He speaks of language as a home, as a country, as a way of knowing who and where we are, and he shows ways in which culture do...more

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Jun 03, 2011 Laeti rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Une autobiographie, empli d'émotions qui dépeint la vie en Irlande d'une famille au sortir de la guerre. Ecrit dans un langage un peu enfantin, elle nous décrit les difficultés d'intégration rencontrées par cette famille allemande et irlandaise. Elle évoque aussi la volonté de vouloir s'accrocher à tout prix à un nationalisme exacerbé. Un très bon livre!

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Apr 29, 2010 Ameson-money rated it 5 of 5 stars

The story is told through the eyes of Hugo's younger self and the story is captivating - growing up in a seaside town in Ireland with an Irish-speaking father and German-speaking mother Hugo observes his parents, siblings and the world around him. It's just a very beautifully told story, though sad.

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Dec 18, 2011 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

Good, but I almost threw it away at the dog part, because I am incapable of reading bad dog things without extreme anger.

(I don't care if this is a spoiler: the dog bit is kind of redeemed by the end.)

Like several other books I've been reviewing in this batch of updates, it's difficult to read but worth reading. It probably deserved four stars instead of three, but the dog stuff blinds me, so.

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Mar 25, 2009 Carricklass rated it 5 of 5 stars

Loved this book - could identify with a lot of his childhood, though I wasn't beaten for speaking English - for plenty of other things - like being caught knitting on a Sunday! Informative book written in a deceptively easy style - plenty of fun masking the pain.

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Jun 27, 2012 Marla Bruner rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great book. There is a sadness tempered with understanding that permeates these childhood memories. An understanding that comes with adulthood. A great few into father-son relationships and how familial relationships are influenced by societal and economic pressures.

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Apr 09, 2013 Aosta rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this in a play format so it gave a sense of the present. The characters were very real. I could totally empathize with the main character who was always caught between the three factions of father, mother, and the world outside the home.

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Nov 12, 2010 Luisa rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm not sure what to think about this book. After some moments of doubt I decided to rate it as "I didn't like it" for many different reasons. The were parts of the book that I found interesting but soon after the author passed on to a different story altogether and it was sometimes hard to follow his train of thought. Towards the end I started to get very impatient and couldn't wait for the book to end and that is probably the reason why I didn't quite grasp the reason of the author's father's...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Ciaran Mcfadden rated it 4 of 5 stars

Well us Irish certainly don't do childhood memoirs by half .. Engrossing stuff from Hugo and his youthful escapades with a Nationalistic Irish Father and a German mother who has survived WWII.

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Mar 31, 2010 Audrey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Interesting memoir by Hamilton, who grew up in a Post WWII household in Ireland with a strict Irish dad who only wanted his children to speak Irish and a good-natured German mother.

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Jun 06, 2012 Debbie Walker rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this memoir, interesting and unusual plus very well written. Now released into the bookcrossing wilds......a campsite in the fdordogne, happy reading if you find it!

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About Hugo Hamilton

Hugo Hamilton is an Irish writer.

Hamilton's mother was a German who travelled to Ireland in 1949 for a pilgrimage, married an Irishman, and settled in the country. His father was a militant nationalist who insisted that his children should speak only German or Irish, but not English, a prohibition the young Hugo resisted inwardly. "The prohibition against English made me see that language as a cha...more Hugo Hamilton is an Irish writer.

Hamilton's mother was a German who travelled to Ireland in 1949 for a pilgrimage, married an Irishman, and settled in the country. His father was a militant nationalist who insisted that his children should speak only German or Irish, but not English, a prohibition the young Hugo resisted inwardly. "The prohibition against English made me see that language as a challenge. Even as a child I spoke to the walls in English and secretly rehearsed dialogue I heard outside," he wrote later.

As a consequence of this, he grew up with three languages - English, Irish and German - and a sense of never really belonging to any: "There were no other children like me, no ethnic groups that I could attach myself to".

Hamilton became a journalist, and then a writer of short stories and novels. His first three novels were set in Central Europe. Then came Headbanger (1996), a darkly comic crime novel set in Dublin and featuring detective Pat Coyne. A sequel, Sad Bastard, followed in 1998.

Following a year spent in Berlin on a cultural scholarship, he completed his memoir of childhood, The Speckled People (2003), which went on to achieve widespread international acclaim. Telling the story through the eyes of his childhood self, it painfully evoked the struggle to make sense of a bizarre adult world. It "triumphantly avoids the Angela's Ashes style of sentimental nostalgia and victim claims," wrote Hermione Lee in the The Guardian . "The cumulative effect is to elevate an act of scrupulous remembering into a work of art," commented James Lasdun in the New York Times. The story is picked up in the 2006 volume, The Sailor in the Wardrobe.

In May 2007, German publisher Luchterhand published Die redselige Insel (The Talkative Island), in which Hamilton retraced the journey Heinrich Böll made in Ireland that was to be the basis of his bestselling book Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) in 1957. Hamilton's most recent novel, Disguise was published on June 6, 2008.

Hugo Hamilton lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ham...
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“Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.” — 63 people liked it

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