"Only a few days earlier he had explained to her that he did not merely read books but traveled with them, that they took him to other countries and unfamiliar continents, and that with their help he w..."
- Jan-Philipp Sendker
"Who are you? What’s your name?”“Mi Mi.”“Do you hear that thumping noise?”“No.”“It must be here somewhere.” Tin Win knelt down. Now it was nearly next to his ear. “I hear it more and more distinctly. A..."
"Yet she also longed for moments when she might be weak, when she need not prove anything to anyone."
"We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes as uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We a..."
"She saw that he knew what loneliness was, that he understood why it might be raining inside a person even when the sun shone, that sadness needed no immediate cause."
"How can anyone truthfully claim to love someone when they’re not prepared to share everything with that person, including their past?"
"She hoped that Tin Win would learn what she had learned over the years: that there are wounds time does not heal, though it can reduce them to a manageable size."
"Eyes and ears are not the problem... It is rage that blinds and deafens us. Or fear. Envy, mistrust. The world contracts, gets all out of joint when you are angry or afraid."
"Of course I am not referring to those outburts of passions that drive us to do and say things we will later regret, that delude us into thinking we cannot life without a certain person, that set us qu..."
"And so there must be in life something like a catastrophic turning point, when the world as we know it ceases to exist. A moment that transforms us into a different person from one heartbeat to the ne..."