Stones from the River Quotes

“About endings....unless we do them well, we have to keep repeating them.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“And what to embrace.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“And yet, just because a story was a certain way didn't mean it would always be like that: stories took their old shape with them and fused it with the new shape. She didn't understand yet how all the tangles of their lives would sort themselves out in her story, but she supposed it would be like raking: not every bit of earth would be untangled at once.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“These are things," Trudi's father told her long before she was old enough for confession, "that the church calls sins, but they are part of being human. And those we need to embrace. The most important thing--" He paused. "--is to be kind.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“And what she wanted more than anything that moment was for all the differences between people to matter no more - differences in size and race and belief....”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“It was like that with many other events, and it took courage for the few, who would preserve the texture of the truth, not to let its fibers slip beneath the web of silence and collusion which people—often with the best of intentions—spun to sustain and protect one another.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“These are thing," Trudi's father told her long before she was old enough for confession, "that the church call sins, but they are part of being human. And those we need to embrace. The most important thing--" He paused. "--is to be kind.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Carefully, the girl skimmed her fingers across her mother's knee. It was smooth; the skin had closed across the tiny wounds like the surface of the river after you toss stones into the waves. Only you knew they were there. Unless you told.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Only a few people in Burgdorf had read Mein Kampf, and many thought that all this talk about Rssenreinheit-purity of the race-was ludicrous and impossible to enforce. Yet the long training in obedience to elders, government, and church made it difficult-even for those who considered the views of the Nazis dishonorable-to give voice to their misgivings. And so they kept hushed, yielding to each new indignity while they waited for the Nazis and their ideas to go away, but with each compliance they relinquished more of themselves, weakening the texture of the community while the power of the Nazis swelled.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“With the stories of people she’d known since her childhood it was like that: one incident in their lives might come to an ending, but others would lead into new veins, and what was fascinating was to look at the whole of it and discern a pattern, a way of being, that had shaped those passages.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Because of the people in history, Trudi felt a far stronger link than ever before to the people in her town, and from all this grew new stories, which she told to Eva and her father, and to Frau Abramowitz who listened to every word and sighed, “Trudi, you and your splendid imagination.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Given a choice, she would rather be the one who was persecuted than the one doing the persecuting-- both had a terrible price to pay, but she would rather endure humiliation and fear than grow numb to what it was to be human.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“High in the hazy sky, the snowfkakes looked tiny and all alike, but as they drifted past the narrow window of the sewing room, all were unique - long or round or triangular - as if they'd borrowed their shapes from the clouds they'd come from.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Many of them couldn’t fathom how Germany could have lost this war against the world, and they kept speculating about conspiracies and malicious forces that had brought about the shame of their defeat.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“But Seehund hurled his love at her, his entire body. It was a love she recognized—she’d felt it within herself but had never been able to demonstrate it with such abandon.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“And throughout all, Trudi wove the assurance...that - once someone had been in your life - you could keep that person there despite the agony of loss, as long as you had faith that you could bring the sum of all your hours together in one shining moment.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“We Germans have a history of sacrificing everything for one strong leader,” her father had said. “It’s our fear of chaos.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Deine Anpassungsfäheigkeit—Your ability to adapt,” her husband said, “is far more dangerous to you than any of them will ever be. You’ll keep adapting and adapting until nothing is left.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“...much of what the church calls sin is simply being human.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“The risk her stories posed to others—and to herself—was more subtle. When she was younger, she had used secrets as if they were currency, but she’d found out how secrets could use her instead by becoming stronger than she. It happened whenever she couldn’t stay away from a secret—drawn to it the way Georg Weiler was drawn to the bottle—though she sensed it would be better for her not to know.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“And what she hated more than anything that moment was for all the differences between people to matter no more - no more differences in size and belief- differences that became justification for destruction.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Now the purpose of her stories had changed. She spun them to discover their meaning. In the telling, she found, you reached a point where you could not go back, where—as the stories changed—it transformed you, too.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Trudi’s gift lay in knowing. Knowing the words that named the thoughts inside people’s minds, the words that masked the fears and secrets inside their hearts. To force their secrets to the surface like water farts and let them rip through the silence. They called her a snoop, a meddler. But even though she was more inconvenient to them than ever before, they kept coming back—to borrow books, they liked to believe—yet, what they really came for, even those who feared Trudi Montag, were the stories she told them about their neighbors and relatives. What they brought Trudi in return were stories of their own lives, which they yielded to her questions or, unknowingly, to her ears as she overheard them talk to each other between the stacks; and they didn’t even miss what she had taken from them until the words they’d bartered in return for her tales had ripened into new stories that”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“But not everyone looked away when injustices happened to others. When little Fienchen Blomberg was stoned in front of the Weilers’ grocery store by six older boys, Frau Weiler let out a howl, grabbed her broom, and whipped from the store.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“She fought him by reminding herself what her father had said to Emil Hesping—that they lived in a country where believing had taken the place of knowing.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River

“Only a few of the people in Burgdorf had read Mein Kampf, and many thought that all this talk about Rassenreinheit—purity of the race—was ludicrous and impossible to enforce. Yet the long training in obedience to elders, government, and church made it difficult—even for those who considered the views of the Nazis dishonorable—to give voice to their misgivings. And so they kept hushed, yielding to each new indignity while they waited for the Nazis and their ideas to go away, but with every compliance they relinquished more of themselves, weakening the texture of the community while the power of the Nazis swelled.”
― Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River