Mischling Quotes

“Work would never set us free, despite what they'd promised. But beauty? Yes, I thought, beauty might see us past the gates.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Because you had no power over the fact that I was born, you took from me what I was born with—the person who was my love, the half that made me entire—and now I am lessened into this dull thing, a divided person who will live forever, wandering in search of some nothing, some nowhere, some no-feeling, to mend my pain.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“It was pathetic of me to try, I know, but I had always believed in the world’s ability to right itself, just like that, with a single kindness.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Everyone survived by planning. I could see that. I realized that Stasha and I would have to divide the responsibilities of living between us. Such divisions had always come naturally to us, and so there, in the early-morning dark, we divvied up the necessities: Stasha would take the funny, the future, the bad. I would take the sad, the past, the good.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“I love you,” I said into his shoulder. Peter stopped treading on my feet and cocked a half-closed eye at me in suspicion. “You don’t. You could—I think—in time. But you’re just saying that to me because you think you won’t have a chance to say it truthfully someday, aren’t you?” “Yes,” I confessed. “I am.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“The whole world will never look back. And if they do, they’ll probably say that it never really happened.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Auschwitz was built to imprison us. Birkenau was built to kill us. Mere kilometers bridged their attached evils. What this zoo was designed for, I did not know - I could only swear that Pearl and I, we would never be caged.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“We couldn’t imagine the greatness of suffering, how artful and calculated it could be, how it could pluck off the members of a family, one after the other, or show an entire village the face of death in one fell swoop. The”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“The heavens I saw, they h ad never been captured, but they were haunted like I was. Did they know the details of my sister's death? Those stars, theyknew what suffering and renewal meant, they were forged from collapse and dust and fire. That wisdom should have been enough to justify their existence, I'd think. But they insisted on being beautiful too.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“It is difficult to realize that part of you might travel for a lifetime with someone you hate, entirely against your own will. You may know what I speak of--maybe someone remembers you when you'd rather be forgotten; maybe someone has a piece of you that is impossible to retrieve.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“she would never look away, not ever, no matter how much it hurt me, because in looking away, she said, we would lose ourselves so thoroughly that our loss would require another name. So,”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“I was a broken half afloat in a great nowhere, and the trains were determined to keep me this way. Let me say this about those days, when the war was still a war, but one soon to end, when refugees were roaming and tanks lay overturned on their backs like great tortoises and one was wise to avoid the marching streams of any soldiers, be they Soviet or German: These trains we never should have trusted again, they appeared to be our only way home. And so people packed themselves into the cars quite willingly and looked the other way when they failed to arrive at their stated destinations. I marveled at our collective belief in an eventual safety.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“What I knew was small, but it enlarged itself quickly. We were in a place where we'd been meant to die, but we'd lived. For what, I wasn't sure - but I was hardly alone in this.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“But as we sang, we forgot our hunger and our filth, we forgot that we were splittable, faded, dim. For a moment, I even forgot that I was mischling.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“But in Auschwitz, I found that the room that really changes you is the one that can make you feel nothing at all. It is the room that says, Come sit in me, and you will know no pain; your suffering isn't real, and your struggles? They're only slightly more real than you are, but not by much. Save yourself, the room advises, by feeling nothing, and if you must feel something, don't doom yourself by showing it.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Late at night, when Pearl was fast asleep, her consciousness a safe distance from my own, I'd think of these tiny pieces of us and wonder if our feelings remained in them, even though they were mere particles. I wondered if the pieces hated themselves for their participation in the experiments. I imagined that they did. And I longed to tell them that it wasn't their fault, that the collaboration wasn't a willing one, that they'd been stolen, coerced, made to suffer. But then I'd realize how little influence I had over these pieces - after we'd been parted, they answered only to nature and science and the man who called himself Uncle. There was nothing I could do on their numerous, microscopic behalfs.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“It is one of those things' ,Patient said brightly 'where it gets worse before it gets even worse and then it never really gets better.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Stealing doesn’t have the same satisfaction when it’s stealing crumbs. Beating people doesn’t mean much when they’re already beaten.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“my heart was busy falling into the blackest depths of me, a locale unknown even to Uncle, where it shed its skin, rolled in bile, assumed a new shell, and grew thorns. Thus armored, the resourceful organ climbed the ladder of my ribs and returned to its place. And I did what Pearl would’ve wanted me to.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“I joined him in stabbing the snow. Have you ever stabbed the snow to make sense of things? It is not something I recommend.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Tears must have been invented for that reason.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Farewell, Horse. Our beloved. You were more innocent than Pearl on the day we were born. You were better than the best parts of us. You were who I wished the world could be.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Because when Auschwitz fell, the lives it took were restored--for the merest of moments--just so our dead could see it founder. ..Theirs was an afterlife of mere moments, a permission to witness the ruin of what had ended them.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“What it took to survive--even this was growing, and as it did, it diminished us both.
Pearl, I thought, I never should have made you in charge of the past. I cannot endure this future.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Dear Pearl, I wrote, believing that someday, if only for a moment, she might leave the site of her capture--be it death, be it Mengele--and see this greeting and know that we were people, still, in spite of what we'd been told.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Because you had no power over the fact that I was born, you took from me what I was born with--the person who was my love, the half that made me entire--and now I am lessened into this dull thing, a divided person who will live forever, wandering in search of some nothing, some nowhere, some no-feeling, to mend my pain.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Because you couldn't make my zayde less than ash, you leave me gray and small, a twisted thing to be blown by whatever wind will have me.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“The stories of this place, they alone changed our longing for attachment.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“I love you" I said into his shoulder...."You don.t You could--I think--in time. But you're just saying that to me because you think you won't have a chance to say it truthfully someday, aren't you?"
"Yes," I confessed. "I am." "Then I love you too," he said, and I know we both wished we meant it.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling

“Nothing about her was vague or negotiable. Some might call this a strong personality. I wanted to call it that, just to be human and generous. But it was obvious that what she really possessed was emptiness so vast that it managed to approximate power.”
― Affinity Konar, Mischling