The Women in the Castle Quotes

“Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted -- and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion. He will think of it every time he goes to a museum or a concert or a play with a long line of people waiting to get inside.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“For so long Marianne and Albrecht and many of their friends had known Hitler was a lunatic, a leader whose lowbrow appeal to people's most selfish, self-pitying emotions and ignorance was an embarrassment for their country.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“In the future, Martin will recall this night as the first time -- and one of the only times -- he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief and guilt.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“And it means reasonable citizens must take action,” Connie continued. “We are not all thugs and villains. But we will become these, if we don’t try to make change.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“What does it take for a person to be able to recognize evil as it unfolds? To see with foresight and acuity .”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Americans can face the world with open arms, Marianne had once said, because the world hasn’t yet come to knock it down.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“This is what Ania will pay for: not only her inaction, but her self-deception, for narrating away evil while staring it in the face.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“There is so much gray between the black and the white and this is where most of us live, trying, but so often failing, to bend towards the light.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“She was her own kind of dreamer, a blind mathematician skating along the thin surface of life, believing in the saving power of logic, reason, and information, overlooking the whole murky expanse of feeling and animal instinct that was the real driver of human behavior, the real author of history.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Instead she squeezes Mary’s arm and appreciates her kindness. Her understanding. This is why people have children, even when they believe the world is going to hell, even when life is nothing but uncertainty. In hopes of being understood.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“You are not responsible for your parents' mistakes."
The words emerged from her mouth without forethought, inspired by the young man's miserable face. But were they true? Hadn't she taught her own children to accept their father's heroism as part of their inheritance? So wouldn't this also be true in the reverse?”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Hitler was a lunatic, a leader whose lowbrow appeal to people’s most selfish, self-pitying emotions and ignorance was an embarrassment for their country.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“expedience could not take precedence over the pursuit of justice.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Germany was being run by a loudmouthed rabble-rouser, bent on baiting other nations to war and making life miserable for countless innocent citizens. And here they were, drinking champagne and dancing to Scott Joplin.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“The child exasperated Marianne with her endless obsession with possession. She seemed to have absorbed the national sense of aggrievement, as if she, personally, were the victim of some great unfairness.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Hitler always said there were too many people on earth. Too many people in Germany – such a small country, so many people … But then of course it turned out his answer to this was not a solution, but a symptom of the disease. He was the rat in the maze that begins to eat the others.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“For so long Marianne and Albrecht and many of their friends had known Hitler was a lunatic, a leader whose lowbrow appeal to people‘s most selfish, self-pitying emotions and ignorance was an embarrassment for their country. They had watched him make a masterwork of scapegoating Jews for Germany’s fall from power and persuade his followers that enlightenment, humanity, and tolerance were weaknesses — “Jewish” ideas that led to defeat. They had wrung their hands over his dangerous conflations, his fervor, and his lack of humanity.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“They had watched him make a masterwork of scapegoating Jews for Germany’s fall from power and persuade his followers that enlightenment, humanity, and tolerance were weaknesses—“Jewish” ideas that led to defeat.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“There is not enough air in the room for Marianne and Elizabeth to share. They have learned this the hard way, but acceptance of the fact has made life easier. Now they see each other twice a year, for a weekend in the early summer and for the American holiday of Thanksgiving”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Weren’t you alarmed by all the racist talk? Hitler’s rants about the “Jewish virus” and “the noble German” . . . You can’t read more than four sentences by the man without knowing he was a racist fanatic, Ania’s daughter will press.

I didn’t notice is all Ania can say. And it is true, as outlandish as it sounds. She has never been taught that drawing distinctions between races is dangerous. In Germany, there is no great history of equal rights. For thousands of years, the population was divided into an impoverished and disenfranchised peasant class and wealthy, ruling aristocrats. The only teaching that gives her pause is the Christian precept of kindness and tolerance. But the churches themselves are not making much fuss about Hitler’s harsh rhetoric. Christianity is superstition, Hitler says—a palliative against life’s brutal realities.

This is before the war. Before the Jewish star badges, before the roundups and mass deportations and extermination camps.

And, really, Ania is busy with her own life.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“He had no skills or smarts or education to distinguish him, which made him just the sort to be taken with the notion that he belonged to a master race”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted—and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion. He will think of it every time he goes to a museum or a concert or a play with a long line of people waiting to get inside.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“The music, Beethoven's Ninth, opened with a blast: violins, trumpet, an explosion loud enough to knock thought and worry from the mind. It was reminiscent of war - thundering footsteps, the rumble of tanks, the screech & crack of planes overhead, an exploding bomb. The audience sat at attention, gripping their seats. Something small and gentle might have lost them. Something tender and they might have begun to cry and never stopped. They were there, but they were not strong. They would do anything to protect themselves from sadness.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“She was her own kind of dreamer, a blind mathematician skating along the thin surface of life, believing in the saving power of logic, reason, and information, overlooking the whole murky expanse of feeling and animal instinct that was the real driver of human behavior, the real author of history. Since”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted—and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“I want to say," she begins again, "I want to say that I have not always tried hard enough to know. That this 'moral compass' Claire talks about may not have been as helpful in my own personal life as it was in the wider political context. Sometimes it is easier to see clearly from a distance. And what is up close -- what is up close" -- she falters -- " is harder to make out."
In the audience someone coughs.
"There is so much gray between the black and the white ... and this is where most of us live.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“She will rue her lack of curiosity, her ability to see things only as she wanted to, for the rest of her life.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Benita held no reverence for anything old or historic. History was horrible, a long, sloppy tail of grief. It swished destructively behind the present, toppling everyone's own personal understanding of the past.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“Our love has always been its own country.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle

“He is against politics in general and longs for the restitution of the monarchy. They have seen nothing but rioting and inflation in the five years since Wilhelm II abdicated. And Ania knows not to mention the Communists. Her father has not recovered from the shock of their brief takeover of Bavaria, which, for a few weeks in 1919, became the Bavarian Soviet Republic. If he begins on the subject, no one will hear of anything else for days. For Doktor Fortzmann all was better under the kaiser.”
― Jessica Shattuck, The Women in the Castle