The Orphan's Tale Quotes

“Why are we so hard on one another? I wonder. Hadn’t the world already given us challenges enough?”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“We cannot change who we are. Sooner or later we will all have to face ourselves.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Never assume that you know the mind of another.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Sometimes our forever life does not last as long as we think”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“There is so little one can be certain of these days . . . But finding a hand to hold while we walk this path makes even the most difficult of times better and the strangest of villages home . . . Once I thought my life was over . . . I never thought I would find happiness again . . . And then I met you and it all changed. You made me believe again that good things were possible. I love you.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“You love the people they were before, before all the awfulness that made them do this thing.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Why is he being so nice? He is friendly--too friendly. No one is nice just for the sake of it these days, not unless he wants something.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Though no one speaks of it, I sometimes wonder if we are marching toward extinction with each performance, too busy dancing and flying through the air to see it.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“I wonder what he sees, a chapter from a book I have never read.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“No man is worth the whole world.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Conversations in French bubble around me like a long-forgotten perfume I am desperate to inhale. Familiar words trickle back, first in a stream then a river, though I've scarcely heard them in half a century.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“And Ruth said, 'Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“There have been circuses from the times of the Romans and Greeks, our traditions centuries old. We had survived the Middle Ages, the Napoleonic Wars, the Great War. We would survive this, too.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“You love the people they were before, below all the awfulness that made them do this thing, you know?”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“I see my own mother now, as clearly as I had the day she watched me leave. She should have fought for me, protected me with her life.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“There is a flash in her eyes as she expects to be rejected yet again. How is it possible after all that she has been through that she can still let people hurt her?”
― Pam Jenoff , The Orphan's Tale

“Gerda sends Astrid flying back, then swings to her own board. Astrid soars now like a rider taming a wild beast, bending the trapeze to her own will. She spins by her ankles, by a lone knee, barely touching the bar to which I always cling fast. Gerda watches Astrid with disinterest, almost distaste. She and the other women do not like Astrid. Within days of arriving, I heard the whispers: they resent Astrid for returning and taking her spot at the top of the aerial act while they had worked for years, and for coupling up with Peter, one of the few eligible men the war had left. The girls at the home were much the same, sniping and whispering behind each other’s backs. Why are we so hard on one another? I wonder. Hadn’t the world already given us challenges enough? But if Astrid notices their coldness, she doesn’t seem to mind. Or perhaps she just doesn’t have need for any of them. She certainly doesn’t need me”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“His kind of courage was boundless, though, and he would not have turned away a person in need, whether a star performer or a simple laborer or a child such as Theo with no skills at all. It was not about the circus or family connections, but human decency. Herr”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“mantra that “I can write through anything” to”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Though lonely, I need it that way. I cannot answer questions about the past.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“No podemos cambiar quienes somos. Tarde o temprano tendremos que enfrentarnos a nosotros mismos.”
― Pam Jenoff, El vagón de los huérfanos

“Estamos juntos solo porque queremos; es una relación que no está basada ni en un pasado común ni en promesas de futuro que quizá no podamos cumplir. La parte de mí que tal vez habría deseado algo más de un hombre murió el día que me fui de Berlín.”
― Pam Jenoff, El vagón de los huérfanos

“Verdun;”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“One day you may feel differently,” she replies. “Sometimes our forever life does not last as long as we think.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“La sua premura è una goccia d’acqua, però, incapace di riempire l’oceano di vuoto che ho nel cuore.”
― Pam Jenoff, La ragazza della neve

“I had assumed Herr Neuhoff had taken me in only to help the show, and perhaps as a favor to an old family friend. His kind of courage was boundless, though, and he would not have turned away a person in need, whether a star performer or a simple laborer or a child such as Theo with no skills at all. It was not about the circus or family connections, but human decency.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“《Alguien que no me abandonará》, pienso para mis adentros y deseo volver a ser joven, porque entonces tal vez lo hubiera creído.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“A veces la vida que imaginamos no dura tanto como creemos.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Quieres a las personas por lo que eran antes, por encima del horror que las hizo comportarse como lo hicieron.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“No me he permitido pensar en esas cosas, sabiendo que, si me permitiera siquiera un goteo de recuerdos, me ahogaría en una marea que sería incapaz de frenar.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale