The Safekeep Quotes

“That's what happens when people die. They take themselves with them and you never ever find out anything new about them ever.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She had made the kitchen a lovely place. Isabel could cry at it: at how a room could be made, and left behind, and turn terrible by way of absence. How a space could miss a person.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“What was joy, anyway. What was the worth of happiness that left behind a crater thrice the size of its impact.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She had held a pear in her hand and she had eaten it skin and all. She had eaten the stem and she had eaten its seeds and she had eaten its core, and the hunger still sat in her like an open maw. She thought: I can hold you and find that I still miss your body. She thought: I can listen to you speak and still miss the sound of your voice.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“There isn’t a version of me that could’ve looked away from you.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She thought: I can hold you and find that I still miss your body. She thought: I can listen to you speak and still miss the sound of your voice.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She would never leave a room again and not leave half of her behind.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She belonged to the house in the sense that she had nothing else, no other life than the house, but the house, by itself, did not belong to her.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“Isabel had never known loneliness like that, one that arrived without the promise of leaving.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She thought that might have been joy, or something like it. Something that feels sad as much as it feels like love.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“Who are you?' She said, 'Have you always been like this? Have you just been waiting to happen?”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“It embarrassed her, her own reflection. She had strong ideas of beauty that she did not find in herself: how tender the face must be, how thick the hair. She had strong thoughts about what it meant, to care too much about beauty. To want it, to search for it in oneself. In another. They weren't nice thoughts.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“What was joy, anyway. What was the worth of happiness that left behind a crater thrice the size of its impact. What did people who spoke of joy know of what it meant, to sleep and dream only of the whistle of planes and knocks at the door and on windows and to wake with a hand at one's throat— one's own hand, at one's own throat. What did they know of not speaking for days, of not having known the touch of another, never having known, of want and of not having felt the press of skin to one's own, and what did they know of a house that only ever emptied out. Of animals dying and fathers dying and mothers dying and finding bullet holes in the barks of trees right below hearts carved around names of people who weren't there and the bloody lip of a sibling and what did what did she know— of what could she possibly know of what it—”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“There's no determination there... I dislike you - quite effortlessly.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“How quickly did the belly of despair turn itself over into hope, the give of the skin of overripe fruit.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“The canals had frozen over. Isabel tested one with her foot and found it solid, and then stood on it in wonder; a miracle, she thought, to stand so solidly on what could also engulf you.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“Hendrik looked at her, startled, and she wanted to tell him - wanted to be done with it, make it someone else's burden. No one knew of her heart and no one knew of her grief and it was torture.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She was not wanted. That was the long and the short of it: she had learned want, briefly and hungrily. A span of a day, two days. She had learned the shape of it, the quick taste of it. She had reached out, foolishly, and she was not wanted in return.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“How strange can the body be. I do not know it, never know what it wants. Does anyone know their body, truly? I wonder.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“Found that love was a sickly thing that punished you for each step you took in its direction.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“I think she wants to eat me. I think she would inhale me if she could. I think she'd crawl herself inside of me if she thought that's where she'd find something that I've kept hidden from her. God help me. Would I let her? I would let her. God help me she looks at me. God help me I don't want her to look away.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She was pretty in a way that men thought women ought to be pretty.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“If you are mine then I am yours. Do you understand? If I stay, if I'm yours then you must keep me, and I can never-”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She felt she was not who she once was. She felt that this should be visible from a great distance.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“Morning rose in the quiet chord of winter's pink.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“Isabel wanted to not hear the words in the same way she could sometimes blur her eyes when looking at something - decide not to see it in full focus, decide to disengage.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“She had made the kitchen a lovely place. Isabel could cry at it: at how a room could be made, and left behind, and turn terrible by way of absence. How a space could miss a person.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“The memories were heavy, empty things low in her gut and only angered her: that her own doorway could be taken away from her, that a childhood and a youth and a life lived through that doorway could disappear in favor of a single person.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“Isabel tried to breathe through the misery of holding someone else's hurt within oneself and stayed awake like a guard dog - like there was something to keep out. Like there was someone trying to get in.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

“The Swiss government had sent a bill to the Dutch government and the Dutch government said: pay up! They didn’t have the money of course. They were sent to the old factories in Eindhoven that they used like a big barn to send all the leftover Jews.”
― Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep