Germans Savčišens > Germans's Quotes

“There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple.

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.

Without individuals we see only numbers, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people- but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, this skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies' own myriad squirming children?

We draw our lines around these moments of pain, remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain.

Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.

A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.

And the simple truth is this: There was a girl, and her uncle sold her.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“He was alone in the darkness once more, but the darkness became brighter and brighter until it was burning like the sun.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“There was nowhere they could have gone and they went there anyway.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation's Edge

“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“People are too complicated to have simple labels.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Watch out for that pedestrian!"

"It's on the street, it knows the risks it's taking!”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Tell me something, old friend: why are you fighting?"
What other reason could there be?" Colonel Gerineldo Marquez answered. "For the great Liberal party."
You're lucky because you know why," he answered. "As far as I'm concerned, I've come to realize only just now that I'm fighting because of pride."
That's bad," Colonel Gerineldo Marquez said.
Colonel Aureliano Buendia was amused at his alarm. "Naturally," he said. "But in any case, it's better than not knowing why you're fighting." He looked him in the eyes and added with a smile:
Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude