Where the Angels Lived Quotes

“It’s so difficult to say goodbye because, really, we’ve only just said hello.”
― Margaret McMullan, Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

“Look at me. You are the first person to ask about him. Do you understand? No one has ever asked about this man, your relative, Richard. No one has called him down. No one ever printed out his name. You are responsible now. You must remember him in order to honor him.”
― Margaret McMullan, Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

“Life without tears is like goulash without paprika.”
― Margaret McMullan, Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

“It starts with the father. But for me, it started with my mother. My mother and her secrets.”
― Margaret McMullan, Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

“There is a strange, mineral scent in the air. As soon as we enter the compound surrounded by al the granite walls, the day turns colorless, shadowless. It’s neither warm nor cold, though we shiver in our coats.”
― Margaret McMullan, Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

“Maybe they were right — Friedrich and all the other Engel de Jánosi’s who got out and never told their children or grandchildren the whole truth. They didn’t want to burden or overload us with family history. Too much baggage meant we wouldn’t be able to move forward and into a bright future. Too much bitterness, anger, and sorrow leads us into that dark rabbit hole of despair. They didn’t want to introduce us to their ghosts. But those ghosts find us anyway.”
― Margaret McMullan, Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

“At which point exactly does the past give way to the present, and does time ever intersect? Through years of occupations, this house on Rákóczi út was forced to give way to new inhabitants. Just by being here, standing here in from of this house, we are bringing them all back, through memory.”
― Margaret McMullan, Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return

“He (Friedrich Engel de Jánosis) stated clearly that he was the last Engel de Jánosis, when in fact he knew he was not. He left behind his mother, wife, and daughter, all of them Engel de Jánosis. And then there were the Hungarian Engel de Jánosis, his aunts, uncles, cousins still alive in Pécs and in other towns and villages in Hungary. He knew this. They were not dead, not yet anyway, but in his mind, they were. Already, the historian was rewriting history.”
― Margaret McMullan, Where the Angels Lived: One Family's Story of Exile, Loss, and Return