More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 8 - October 17, 2018
I didn’t know why we took pictures of ourselves with symbols of tyranny and oppression. Maybe it was a way of remembering. Maybe it was the only way we knew how to say we recognized the importance of everything that had happened to bring down the wall.
Did defending Germany now mean apologizing for events of the past? Were memorials apologies?
People had died here on the dirt beneath this plaza, trying to reach freedom. Places can be victims of history too.
Why should they? I was a girl who shouldn’t be there. I was an accident. A mishap. An anomaly. I’d never been part of the popular crowd at home, but here, this was an entirely different feeling of being an outsider. I wasn’t just an outsider, I was an outlier. I didn’t belong here. I couldn’t keep up in conversations,
Sometimes when I woke up, I still thought it was a dream.
“Death is one way of going home, Ellie. But you’re not going to die. Berlin has enough ghosts. Germany has enough ghosts. Europe has more than enough ghosts. Choosing to be a ghost is disrespectful to all the real ghosts.”
“I don’t know the answer to the magic part. I imagine it’s always been around, showing itself in different ways.
“The people never mentioned in history books still made history,”
Simple borders and demarcations made such a difference in someone’s future, hopes, and dreams, and the promises they could make. How pointless the world could be.
I built the maybes up inside me like a wall around my heart and hid behind them.
Almost. Almost. I had always been an almost girl. I almost had straight As. I almost had a boyfriend. I almost had a date to prom. I almost didn’t go on the trip. I almost didn’t end up here.
We can’t change the past, Aurora. We can only try to do better in the present and the future.”
History is riddled with deaths. We’re all here because of ghosts.”
Injustices are countered by acts of courage. We create Brave wherever we are brave.
If you give a girl a red balloon, she’ll believe in magic and memory. If you give a girl a red balloon, she’ll never want to let go.
