The Ragged Edge of Night Quotes

“The Lord does not make men do evil things to one another. But the Lord gave us the right to choose. Whether we do good or evil, it is our own decision and our own responsibility.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“If we had taken up this habit of kindness long ago, before we fell into darkness, what suffering might we have spared the world and ourselves?”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Lord, grant me the strength to use what poor talents You have given me, wisely and well. And whatever I do, let me do it for Your true purpose and not the whim of any man.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Your feelings are your compass. They guide you to what’s right.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“They want you tired and distracted. They plan to burn this world down”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“She can’t release the past as easily as that. Who among us can? What has gone before drags behind. As we move through our lives, our workaday habits, we trail our ghostly wakes.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Against all sense, I believe. Somewhere, beyond the ragged edge of night, light bleeds into this world.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Music eases every pain we don’t know we carry.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Weeping may endure for a night—joy comes with the morning.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Somewhere, beyond the ragged edge of night, light bleeds into this world.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“He remembers a building in Munich, the great green letters painted on its flat, windowless wall, the words of the White Rose: “We will not be silent. We are your guilty conscience. The White Rose will never leave you in peace.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“The work lifts his spirits, when spirits can be lifted, but darkness still catches him now and then. That’s the nature of darkness. It comes at the end of every day, predictable as the striking of a clock’s chime, even in the heart of summer, when the light is full and lingering. You can never quite escape the night. Perhaps that’s as God wills; this must be His design. How are we to know when our lives are good and when we are blessed, if we have no sorrow, no deprivation for comparison’s sake? There is, he believes, a purpose to all the Creator’s ways.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“We’ve almost won.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“The matter is settled. Let Unterboihingen open its doors and welcome the refugees in.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“She knows in her heart that resistance is right, even if it is dangerous.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed, without opposition, by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today, every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible crimes—crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure—reach the light of day?”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“We have forgotten some crucial lesson our forefathers learned long ago, but ignorance is no excuse; the price must be paid. How did we err, and how did we sin, to allow the Reich so much power?”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“How did we err, and how did we sin, to allow the Reich so much power? How far back must we go—we, as a people—to undo each small step toward infamy? The first thin roots of this evil twine through history’s soil. But where do they start? We cannot look to 1934, when the chancellor Adolf Hitler declared himself Führer. That was only the culmination of a long black line of discord.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Weeping may endure for a night—joy comes with the morning. I cannot help but know it. Against all sense, I believe. Somewhere, beyond the ragged edge of night, light bleeds into this world.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Men cry—all the time. Our tears are the glass of our compass case, and the needle that points our way.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“as if this country can find no better use for its children than to catch bullets in some Russian field.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Music is a way of transporting emotion from one breast to another. It is a way of knowing the unknowable, of feeling what we can never allow ourselves to confront in any other way. These agonies and ecstasies—they can break us, use us up, burn us away unless we shield our hearts with music.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“It wasn’t until the 2016 election that I knew the time had come. As I watched the US I thought I knew devolve, seemingly overnight, into an unrecognizable landscape—a place where political pundits threw up Nazi salutes in front of news cameras, unafraid—a place where swastikas bloomed like fetid flowers on the walls of synagogues and mosques—I knew the time had come. I called Jodi Warshaw, my first editor at Lake Union Publishing, and told her I’d finally found a World War II subject I wanted to write . . . and I wanted to write it now. Jodi agreed that the time was right for a story of resistance—of an ordinary person taking a stand against hate.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Yet You said, in your boundless love and wisdom, Weeping may endure for a night—joy comes with the morning. I cannot help but know it. Against all sense, I believe. Somewhere, beyond the ragged edge of night, light bleeds into this world.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“If you leave the homeless to wander without shelter, will you be able to meet your own eyes in the mirror without shame? If you do what’s easy, instead of what’s right, will you ever hold your head up again when your spouse speaks your name? If you turn your backs while children starve in your fields, can you ever again touch your own child’s face without agony?”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“How can any man claim those qualities now—integrity, mercy, justice? Everything the Reich has done, all the cruelties and death, the burial of our rights in an unmarked grave—none of it has been Anton’s will, nor does he approve. Yet he can’t help feeling he is to blame. And aren’t we all to blame? What has brought us here, if not heedlessness or willful neglect?”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“The work lifts his spirits, when spirits can be lifted, but darkness still catches him now and then. That’s the nature of darkness. It comes at the end of every day, predictable as the striking of a clock’s chime, even in the heart of summer, when the light is full and lingering. You can never quite escape the night. Perhaps that’s as God wills; this must be His design. How are we to know when our lives are good and when we are blessed, if we have no sorrow, no deprivation for comparison’s sake? There is, he believes, a purpose to all the Creator’s ways. But the mind and heart of God are beyond the understanding of Man. You can know your suffering serves a purpose—that the suffering of others plays some inscrutable part in the grand drama of Creation. But knowing brings you little comfort. When night drops its heavy curtain across the world, darkness is cruel and unforgiving. The way all your happiness can snuff itself in an instant, like the flame of a candle pinched between a licked finger and thumb—it can shake your faith, or strip faith away entirely, if you let it.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“No force can silence us, unless we permit silence. I prefer to roar.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“The resistance is everywhere. Didn’t I tell you once that love couldn’t be erased from the world so easily?”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night

“Pirates. We are Widerstand—resistance—you and I. No force can silence us, unless we permit silence. I prefer to roar.”
― Olivia Hawker, The Ragged Edge of Night