Where Light and Shadow Meet Quotes

“I went up to his gravestone and repeated what the others had done: I placed a pebble on his tomb and silently said to him:

'Well, Oskar, at last we meet again, but this is not the time for reproaches and complaints. It would not be fair to you or to me. Now you are in another world, in eternity, and I can no longer ask you all those questions to which in life you would have given evasive replies... and death is the best evasion of all. I have received no answer, my dear, I do not know why you abandoned me... But what not even your death or my old age can change is that we are still married, this is how we are before God. I have forgiven you everything, everything...'

Murmuring these words, I let them push my wheelchair up the slight incline leading to the gravestone that marks the place where his remains are laid to rest, outside the Jewish cemetery of Jerusalem. I knew that somehow the power of my thoughts had reached him, and felt, after all those years, a strange inner peace filling my spirit.”
― Emilie Schindler, Where Light and Shadow Meet: A Memoir

“During the trip memories of Oskar again overwhelmed me. Until when, Oskar?
Weren't our years together enough? How long does love last? Is passion a place you cannot leave behind until you die?”
― Emilie Schindler, Where Light and Shadow Meet: A Memoir

“Must one first enslave oneself in order to be free? Or should one, as Oskar believed, surrender to one's inclinations? And what exactly were my own inclinations? My mind roamed from one question to the next, but the everyday routine was much simpler: work, work, work... No questions, no decisions. Is work the worst, or the best, way to struggle against oblivion? I don't know.”
― Emilie Schindler, Where Light and Shadow Meet: A Memoir