The Quest for Christa T. Quotes

“You love tenderly and warmly, but your love is like friendship. That's why you have good friends, you're sociable, sympathetic toward people. Until this dissatisfaction comes over you-you know what I'm talking about. Then you become moody, can even repulse people who are close to you, even people who love you, you know why. Those are bad times when everything goes cold, and they follow the times of great love...”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“Wann - wenn nicht jetzt Wann soll man leben wenn nicht in der Zeit die einem gegeben ist”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“Einmal im Leben zur rechten Zeit sollte man an Unmögliches geglaubt haben.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“It didn't happen the way one can tell it; but if once can tell it as it was, then one wasn't in on it, or it all happened so long ago that candor comes too easily. In order to make the story tellable, one has to separate and put into sequence events which in reality were so entangled as to be inexplicable...”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“Coldness in everything. It comes from a long way off; it gets into everything. One must get out of the way before it reaches the core. If it does that, one won't feel even the coldness any more. Do you see what I mean?”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“The happy times of pristine thinking and open minds, always favorable for beginnings, belonged now to the past, and we knew it.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“To become oneself, with all one's strength.
Difficult.
A bomb, a speech, a rifle shot-and the world can look a different place. And then where is this "self"?”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“Even then Christa left. Later she often repeated this procedure - of going away - and there's a pattern to be read here, even on first sight: you leave what you know too well, leave what has ceased to be a challenge. Keep your curiosity about other ranges of experience, and ultimately about yourself in any new experience. Prefer the movement to the goal. - Such a nature has obvious drawbacks for its surroundings and itself.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“The whole world like a wall facing me. I fumble over the stones: no gaps. Why should I go on deluding myself: there’s no gap for me to live in. It’s my own fault. It’s me, I’m simply not determined enough. Yet how simple and natural everything seemed when I first read about it in books.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“...this is a two-fold country, and, what's more, everyone in it is two-fold, one part possibility and the other its refutal”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“What a live person can tell, being alive, would finally kill a dead person: flippancy. Therefore, one cannot, unfortunately, cling to the facts, which are too mixed up with chance and don't tell much.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“Suddenly hope was a thing of the past. I was just one of the other people. I tried imitating the expression on their faces; we still had five days. Then one day; then no time at all. Then I became one of them and in a few hours I'd forgotten that one can look from solid houses with horror and pity at people trekking by.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“But who is being compelled? She herself? And to what end? To make her stay? --Let's put all the evasions behind us.
No: the compulsion to make her stand and be recognized.
Useless to pretend it's for her sake. Once and for all, she doesn't need us. So we should be certain of one thing: that it's for our sake. Because it seems we need her.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“She was doubtful, amid our toxic swirl of new namegiving; what she doubted was the reality of names, though she had to deal with them; she certainly felt that naming is seldom accurate, name and thing coincide only for a short time. She shrank from stamping any name on herself, the brand mark which decides which herd you belong to and which stable you should occupy.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“Yes, perhaps what she was looking for among the children was shelter. Their light precarious breath, their small hands holding one's own. And the fact that only important things are important to them. Love, for example, she can't help still believing in it, somewhat. When doubts came--love, what is it? can it help to shift a single speck of dust?--then sometimes she thought back to the little schoolhouse...”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“Had I missed feeling joy? Surprise? Suddenly the joy came. And even surprise arrived, late as usual. A miracle! If miracles could happen, this was one. And who says we weren't ready for it and met it inappropriately, with broken phrases? We stood at the streetcar stop and began to laugh.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.

“Resurrected from the dead. If miracles could happen, this was one of them; but we no longer knew the right way to accommodate a miracle. We hardly realized that a miracle can be met other than with broken phrases and mocking looks.”
― Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.