Tears of Amber Quotes

“children never learn as much as in the first three years of life. They learn, they live, but they never remember having learned or lived.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“El silencio y el tiempo le sirvieron para echarle llave al cofre, pero no sabía que la noche sabía muy bien dónde guardaba la memoria de aquel día y que, tramposa, esperaba a que su dueña se durmiera para posesionarse del llavero. A la noche no se le engaña. No se enteraba Ilse de que ésta abría la puerta para que las imágenes, los sonidos y los miedos se pasearan sin impedimento por su mente y por su cuerpo, pues dormía profundo.”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos

“But time passes even when it seems still.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“Not talking about it was better, as far as Ilse was concerned.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“I’ve come to the conclusion that, whatever our language, we have more things in common with each other than things that divide us.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“He loved stories—they made life bearable—but Janusz had no illusions: he didn’t live in a story where anything was possible.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“The past was best left there, wherever it was.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“he wanted to follow Wanda Hahlbrock’s example and immerse himself in work to stop from thinking.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“Because life is hard with a skinned heart.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“the golden rule: to treat others as you’d like others to treat you.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“alive to enjoy food another day. Cold, but alive to enjoy warmth when it came. Alone, but alive to enjoy company when it found him.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“At the first breath, life hurts. How could you not cry, the first time the light hits your eyes, or the first time you feel the dry brush of the air on your skin? How could you not cry when your lungs are filled with cold, unfamiliar oxygen, or when the soft sounds that used to reach your flooded ears arrive hard, unfiltered? How could you not protest when the world turns infinite and does nothing to contain the body that, until that day, had been so tightly held, so closely hugged in the dark softness of your mother’s interior?”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“because someone like him would never humble himself by bowing. Not even before the people who’d granted him power with their votes and their faith, and who sustained him at the heights he seemed to enjoy so much.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“not mean anything: the number is empty. However, if I show a single, individual man in his perfection, his faith, his hopes and his difficulties, if I show you how he dies, then you will remember this story forever.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“For all pilgrims in search of life and peace, and for all lands that welcome them”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“cry”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“politics was the new religion; Adolf Hitler, the new messiah.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“It was impossible to contradict them. Impossible to close the book and ignore the homework that had to be handed in the next day, with good handwriting and spelling. It was impossible to go to the teacher and demand: Fräulein, stop teaching my daughter this garbage.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“worse still, being forced every fifteen days to burst into people’s homes and demand donations of money or goods. Don’t take no for an answer, her superiors told her; reward them with badges on their doors if they donate, but punish them by adding them to the offenders list if they don’t.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“It was also impossible to tell Ilse that everything they were teaching her was pure nonsense. Knowing her, the next day, she would march into school and announce, my mama says everything you teach is nonsense, Fräulein. The danger wasn’t that she might offend the teacher; the true danger was in offending the Party, which didn’t tolerate any slight, let alone insubordination. And the teacher would rush to inform on them.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“he’d never seen a word that could survive alone, without anyone welcoming it into the warmth of an ear; without being threaded into a chain of sisters preceding and following it, giving it meaning, and with meaning, life.”
― Sofía Segovia, Tears of Amber

“la comprensión de que el único tesoro que vale la pena es la vida.”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos

“Los problemas sociales traspasan las fronteras. Las heridas de la humanidad, esas enormes llagas que contaminan al mundo, no se detienen en las líneas azules y rojas dibujadas en los mapas.” Victor Hugo, sobre Les Misérables,
en una carta a su editor.”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos

“La guerra no muere como mueren los que la alimentan ni cuando alguien pide paz,”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos

“Los misterios de la vida: todos tienen ojos para ver, pero cada quien mira con la óptica de su elección.”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos

“¿sabía que Heinne escribió que donde se queman libros, se terminará por quemar gente?”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos

“el odio y el miedo se parecen mucho y son grandes motivadores, ¿no cree? Ambos deberían ser incluidos entre las grandes musas de la destrucción.”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos

“Prefería que muriera en los brazos de la madre que lo quería, a entregarlo al sistema médico que buscaba erradicar los defectos de la perfección.”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos

“Janusz temía: esos enemigos no eran tan francos en sus engaños como el frío del invierno.”
― Sofía Segovia, Peregrinos