Hans Fallada > Quotes

“As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn’t mean that we are alone.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Not that she's a political animal, she's just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she's of the view that you don't bring children into the world to have them shot.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“It doesn't matter if one man fights or ten thousand; if the one man sees he has no option but to fight, then he will fight, whether he has others on his side or not.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“She had known for a long time that you had to pay for everything in life, and usually more than it was worth.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Everyone facing death, especially premature death, like us, will be kicking themselves about each wasted hour.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“I don't want any funny business, and above all I don't want to be dragged into other people's funny business. If it's to be my head on the block, I want to know that it's doing there, and not that it's some stupid things that other people have done.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Then he picked up the pen and said softly, but clearly, "The first sentence of our first card will read: Mother! The Führer has murdered my son."....At that instant she grasped that this very first sentence was Otto's absolute and irrevocable declaration of war, and also what that meant: war between, on the one side, the two of them, poor, small, insignificant workers who could be extinguished for just a word or two, and on the other, the Führer, the Party, the whole apparatus in all its power and glory, with three-fourths or even four-fifths of the German people behind it. And the two of them in this little room in Jablonski Strasse.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Anna Quangel wishes she could stroke her husband's hand, but she doesn't dare. She just brushes it, as if by accident, and says, 'Oh, sorry, Otto!' He looks at her in surprise, but doesn't say anything. They walk on.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“They had failed to understand that there was no such thing as private life in wartime Germany. No amount of reticence could change the fact that every individual German belonged to the generality of Germans and must share in the general destiny of Germany, even as more and more bombs were falling on the just and unjust alike.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Sometimes Dr Reichhardt would say, ‘We live not for ourselves, but for others. What we make of ourselves we make not for ourselves, but for others…”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“Because it is written that you reap what you sow, and the boy had sown good corn.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“. . . it will have helped us to feel that we have behaved decently till the end . . . we all acted alone, we were all caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn't mean that we are alone, Quangel, or that our deaths will be in vain.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“And so it had been going on week after week. Month after month. That was what was so discouraging, that it went on so endlessly. Hadn't he once believed that it was all over? The worst thing was that it went on. And on, and on, with no end in sight.”
― Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now?

“Das Leben geht immer weiter, auch unter Ruinen. Die Ruinen sind unwichtig, aber das Leben ist wichtig. Das Leben mit einem Grashalm in der Stadtmitte zwischen tausend zerstörten Steinblöcken. Es geht immer weiter.”
― Hans Fallada, Der Alpdruck

“Alles ist Alleinsein.”
― Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now?

“Imam gospodaricu koju sam dužan da slušam, ona vlada mnom, vama, svetom, čak i ovim današnjim svetom napolju, a ta gospodarica je pravda. U nju sam oduvek verovao, verujem i danas, i pravda je jedini putokaz mog postupanja...”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“everyone ought to be interested in politics. If we all had been, then maybe the Nazis wouldn’t have got their hands on power;”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“The air was thick with betrayal. No one could trust anyone else, and in that dismal atmosphere the men seemed to grow even duller, devolving into mechanical extensions of the machines they serviced.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“I believe the last thing that runs through the brain of a dying man is hope.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“Das ist es ja, was ich immer sage: wir sind feige. Wir denken nur an das, was mit uns geschehen wird, nie an das, was den andern geschieht.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“Anna Quangel felt herself trembling. Then she looked over at Otto again. He might be right: whether their act was big or small, no one could risk more than his life. Each according to his strength and abilities, but the main thing was, you fought back. Still”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“The trembling increased, a moan of grief was heard, nothing articulate - as a bird in the night sometimes laments alone.”
― Hans Fallada

“Oh, but childhoods go by so quickly too, we have them for such a short time - six years? Ten at the most? We are so alone in this life.”
― Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now?

“Who wants to die?’ he asked. ‘Everyone wants to live, everyone – even the most miserable worm is screaming for life! I want to live, too. But maybe it’s a good thing, Anna, even in the midst of life to think of a wretched death, and to get ready for it. So that you know you’ll be able to die properly, without moaning and whimpering. That would be disgusting to me…”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“It doesn't matter if there's a handful of you against many of them. Once you've seen that a cause is right, you're obliged to fight for it. Whether you ever live to see success, or the person who steps into your shoes does, it doesn't matter.”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone

“But what can we do?’ Otto Quangel says, unnerved by this onslaught. ‘There are so few of us, and all those millions for him, and now, after the victory against France, there will be even more. We can do nothing!’ ‘We can do plenty!’ she whispers. ‘We can vandalize the machines, we can work badly, work slowly, we can tear down their posters and put up others where we tell people the truth about how they are being cheated and lied to.’ She drops her voice further: ‘But the main thing is that we remain different from them, that we never allow ourselves to be made into them, or start thinking as they do. Even if they conquer the whole world, we must refuse to become Nazis.”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“And then take my family life, my friend. As you know, I've been married twice before and am now on my third marriage. What is that if it's not the third Reich? Else was the first Reich, Hilda was the second Reich, and now Elli is my third Reich. And now I'll let you into a little secret, friend Fallada', dropping his voice to a hollow whisper, 'whenever I quarrel with Elli I'm convinced that the fourth Reich will be along soon! Mark my words, friend Fallada, we'll both live to see the fourth Reich yet!”
― Hans Fallada, In meinem fremden Land: Gefängnistagebuch 1944

“Coffins and coffins, enough for everyone on the shift, enough for everyone in Germany! The men are still alive, but they are already making their own coffins.”
― Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin

“And then she cries some more, and finally she finds sleep, as one always eventually finds sleep, after toothache and after childbirth, after a fight and after a rare joy.”
― Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now?

“Όλους πρέπει να μας ενδιαφέρει η πολιτική. Αν είχαμε ενδιαφερθεί εγκαίρως, τώρα δεν θα ζούσαμε έτσι, δεν θα είχαμε τους ναζιστές να μας κυβερνούν...”
― Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone