Kingdom of Shadows Quotes

“Earlier, during a lull in business, Morath had laid out the details of Kolovitzky’s letter and the two of them had discussed strategy, coming up with the plan that couldn’t go wrong and what to do once it did. In”
― Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows

“He ate a ghastly blutwurst in the dining car, finished Bartha, managed to buy a copy of Est, the evening edition brought in from Budapest, at the station buffet in Brno. Clearly, political life was heating up. Two members of parliament had come to blows. At a workers’ march in the Tenth District, bricks thrown, people arrested. To the Editor. Sir: How can we let these liberal pansies run our lives? An editorial called for “strength, firmness, singleness of purpose. The world is changing, Hungary must change with it.” A coffeehouse by the university had burned down. TENS OF THOUSANDS CHEER HITLER SPEECH IN REGENSBURG. With photograph, on page one. Here they come, Morath thought.”
― Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows

“The lawyer Thien, when Morath was ushered into his office by a junior member of the staff, turned out to be an ancient bag of bones held upright only by means of a stiff, iron-coloured suit.”
― Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows

“What are we supposed to do?” Miss Bonington said, her voice shrill. “Vote?” Annalisa flipped a hand in the air. “Be worse than they are, I suppose, that’s the tragedy. They have created a cheap, soiled, empty world, and now we are to have the pleasure of living in it.”
― Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows

“In the town of Amstetten,” Morath said, “just outside the station, they were waiting at a road crossing so they could throw rocks at the trains. We could see the police, standing around with their arms folded, they’d come to watch. They were laughing, it was a certain kind of joke. The whole thing had, more than anything, a terrible strangeness to it. I remember thinking, they’ve wanted this for a long time. Under all the sentiment and Schlag, was this.”
― Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows

“Closed his eyes and reminded himself who he was, where he came from. Riders in the high grass, campfires on the plain. Idle dreams, he thought, romantic nonsense, but it was still there, somewhere, rattling around inside him. At least he liked to think it was. In his mind? No, in his heart. Bad science, but good metaphysics. And that, he thought, was pretty much who he'd thought he'd always been.”
― Alan Furst, Kingdom of Shadows