Falling Out of Time Quotes

“That's the only way I can somehow get close to it, to that goddamn it, without it killing me, you know? I have to dance around in front of it, I have to move, not freeze like a mouse who sees a snake. I have to feel, even just for a minute, for half a second, the last free place I may still have inside me, the fraction of a spark that still somehow glows inside, which that lousy it couldn't extinguish. Ugh! I have no other way. You have to get that: I have no other way. And maybe there is no other way, huh? I don't know, and you wouldn't understand, so at least write it down, quick. I want to knead it--yes, it, the thing that happened, the thing that struck like lightening and burned everything I had, including the words, goddamn it and its memory, the bastard burned the words that could have described it for me. And I have to mix it up with some part of me. I must, from deep inside me, and then exhale into it with my pathetic breath so I can try and make it a bit--how can I explain this to you--a bit mine, mine...Because a part of me, of mine, already belongs to it, deep inside it, in its damn prison, so there might be an opening, we might be able to haggle...What? Write it down, you criminal! Don't stop writing. You stand there staring at me? Now that I've finally managed to get out a single word about it, and breathe...I have to create characters. That's what I want, what I need. I must, it's always like that with me. Characters that flow into the story, swarm it, that can maybe air out my cell a little and surprise it--and me. Yes, I want them to betray me, betray it, the motherfucker. I want them to jump it from this side and the other and from every direction...just so long as they make it budge even one millimeter, that's enough, so that at least it moves a little on my page, so it twitches,
and just
makes it not
so
so impossible
to

anything.”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“There is
breath
there
is breath
inside the pain
there is breath”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“Jag vill lära mig att skilja minnet
från smärtan. Eller åtminstone delvis,
så mycket det är möjligt, för att allt som varit
inte ska vara till den grad indränkt i smärta.
Då ska jag kunna komma ihåg dig mer,
du förstår: jag ska inte frukta varje gång
minnets brinnande smärta.”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“Sorgen
dömer den levande
till en ensamhet
utan like,
som ensamheten i vilken
sjukdomen
innesluter
den sjuke -”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“Twee mensenvlokjes waren we,
een kind en zijn moeder,
zwevend in het wereldruim,
zes volle jaren lang -
ze waren in mijn ogen
niet meer dan een paar dagen.
We waren als een kinderlied,
een rijm van daden en van wonderen -
totdat heel zacht een zuchtje wind,
een vederlichte bries,
een wiekslag van een waaier,
in de bladeren blies -
en het vonnis velde:
jij hiernaartoe,
hij daarheen -
en daarmee was het uit,
in honderdduizend scherven.”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“Och han är död,
jag förstår nästan
betydelsen
av dessa ljud: Barnet
är dött.
Jag erkänner
att dessa ord
rymmer en sanning.
Han är död.
Han
är död. Men hans död,

hans död
är inte
död.”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“Want--
I want--
I
want, we want
to wake up,
to wake out
of it, to wake into the light, I want
to dip, to bathe my everything
in light--”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“The passing time is painful. I have lost the art of moving simply, naturally, within it. I am swept back against its flow. Angry, vindictive, it pierces me all the time, all the time with its spikes.”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“Now, for instance, her mouth is agape, and I do not know whether she is shouting out in the silence or eagerly swallowing words as they float past.”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“... When —
tell me — when has
someone laughed
into the earth?”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“When —
tell me — when has
someone laughed
into the earth?”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time

“Get up, go and be like him as much as one alive can be like the dead—without dying. Conceive him, yet be your death, too, almost. Like him be now, but only till the shadow of his end falls on the shadow of your being.”
― David Grossman, Falling Out of Time