All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth. Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its branches as if toward the lips of God. And when God stops whispering, they become desperate for someone who can put things right.

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”

Walk the paths of logic. Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Every lock its key.

The eggs taste like clouds. Like spun gold.

Seconds later, she’s eating wedges of wet sunlight.

Doubts: slipping in like eels.

the mademoiselle who looks like a giraffe

“Your problem, Werner,” says Frederick, “is that you still believe you own your life.”

Who knew love could kill you?

what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?

To men like that, time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really, he thinks, it’s a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it. Fighting for it. Working so hard not to spill one single drop.

It’s embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.