Jenny Erpenbeck Quotes

Which means that in the end there are certain things you can take with you when you flee, things that have no weight, such as music.

A house is your third skin, after the skin made of flesh and clothing.

Home. When it rains, you can smell the leaves in the forest and the sand. It's all so small and mild, the landscape surrounding the lake, so manageable. The leaves and the sand are so close, it's as if you might, if you wanted, pull them on over your head. And the lake always laps at the shore so gently, licking the hand you dip into it like a young dog, and the water is soft and shallow.

Wie oft wohl muss einer das, was er weiß, noch einmal lernen, wieder und wieder entdecken, wie viele Verkleidungen abreißen, bis er Dinge wirklich versteht bis auf die Knochen? Reicht überhaupt eine Lebenszeit dafür aus?

How many times, he wonders, must a person relearn everything he knows, rediscovering it over and over, and how many coverings must be torn away before he's finally able to truly grasp things, to understand them to the bone? Is a human lifetime long enough? His lifetime, or anyone else's?

... it would be lovely if he and his wife would succeed in dying before the matter of inherited property was finally settled. Then the person giving the speech at the funeral would be able to say that until the very end they had been able to pursue what they loved: sailing. [p. 121]

Sich vom Wünschen zu verabschieden, ist im Alter wahrscheinlich das, was man am schwersten lernt.

To understand what a person means or says, it’s basically necessary to already know what that person means or is saying.

Have the people living here under untroubled circumstances and at so great a distance from the wars of others been afflicted with a poverty of experience, a sort of emotional anemia? Must living in peace - so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world - inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war?

...but with each step you take while fleeing, your baggage grows less and less, with more and more left behind, and sooner or later you just stop and sit there, and then all that is left of life is life itself, and everything else is lying in all the ditches beside all the roads in a land as enormous as the air, and surely here as well you can find those dandelions, these larks.

The end of a day on which a life has ended is still far from being the end of days.

Adventure is really always just subjecting yourself to something unfamiliar

...die Zeit scheint ihr zur Verfügung zu stehen wie ein Haus, in dem sie mal dieses, mal jenes Zimmer betreten kann.

Everything had kept getting less, they'd had to leave behind more and more baggage, or else it was taken from them, as though they were now too weak to carry all those things that are part of life, as though someone were trying to force them into old age by relieving them of all this.

For a long time the old man and this young man sit there side by side at the desk, watching and listening as these three musicians use the black and white keys to tell stories that have nothing at all to do with keys’ colors.

Nothing is nicer than diving with your eyes open. Diving down as far as the shimmering legs of your mother and father who have just come back from swimming and now are wading to shore through the shallow water. Nothing more fun than to tickle them and to hear, muffled by the water, how they shriek because they know it will make their child happy.

My fear of the future, she says, has not yet failed.

… when he slipped out of his mother’s womb, he was already filled with interior spaces that didn’t belong to him, and he can’t just look inside to inspect his own interior.

Tanrı verdi, Tanrı aldı, demişti kadına büyükannesi mezar çukurunun başında.

... keyif duyan kişi bulunduğu yerde takılıp kalır, artık ileriye doğru hareket etmezdi.

Über das sprechen, was Zeit eigentlich ist, kann er wahrscheinlich am besten mit denen, die aus ihr hinausgefallen sind. Oder in sie hineingesperrt, wenn man so will.

Learning to stop wanting things is probably one of the most difficult lessons of getting old.

there’s no better way to make history disappear than to unleash money, money roaming free has a worse bite than an attack dog, it can effortlessly bite an entire building out of existence,

Dünya görüşü aslında tam olarak şuydu: Görmeyi öğrenmek. Doğru sözcükler bulunduğunda dünyayı değiştirmek mümkün müydü? Yoksa dünyayı değiştirmek sadece doğru sözcükleri bulmakla mı mümkündü?

This here is your inheritance, says the senior partner. Yes, he says, Ludwig, I know, and stows the plan for the bathing house (5.5m long, 3.8m wide, outer wall construction: wood, roof construction: thatch), stows both the plan and the mosquito in his briefcase. On a German shelf, this mosquito, pressed flat between large quantities of paper, will outlast time and times, and one day it might even be petrified, who knows.

The Lord gave, and the Lord took away, her grandmother said to her at the edge of the grave. But that wasn't right, because the Lord had taken away much more than had been there to start with, and everything her child might have become was now lying there at the bottom of the pit, waiting to be covered up.

The more highly developed a society is, the more its written laws come to replace common sense. In Germany, I estimate that only two-thirds of our laws are still anchored in the emotional lives of the people, as it were. The other third are laws pure and simple, formulated with such a high level of precision and abstraction that all basis in human emotion has become superfluous and thus ceases to exist.

Her body is a city. Her heart is a large shady square, her fingers pedestrians, her hair the light of streetlamps, her knees two rows of buildings. She tries to give people footpaths. She tries to open up her cheeks and her towers. She didn’t know streets hurt so much, not that there were so many streets in her to begin with. She wants to take her body on a stroll, out of her body, but she doesn’t know where the key is.

Die Freude an dem, was am richtigen Platz ist, was nicht verloren geht, was auf die richtige Weise gehandhabt wird und nicht verschwendet, die Freude an dem, was gelingt, ohne ein anderes am Gelingen zu hindern, ist, so sieht er das, in Wahrheit die Freude an einer Ordnung, die nicht von ihm errichtet, sondern von ihm nur gefunden werden muss, die außer ihm liegt, und ihn gerade deshalb verbindet mit dem, was wächst, fliegt oder gleitet, ihn dafür zwar von manchen Menschen entfernt, aber das ist ihm gleich.

The Wall had turned their street into a cul-de-sac where children roller-skated. Then in 1990 the Wall was cleared away piece by piece, and each time a new crossing point was opened, a crowd of emotional West Berliners punctually gathered, eager to bid a warm welcome to their brothers and sisters from the East. One morning, he himself became the object of these tearful welcomes: the East Berliner who’d lived on this street that had been cut in half for twenty-nine years, crossing over on his way to freedom. But he hadn’t been on his way to freedom that morning, he was only trying to get to the University, punctually taking advantage of the S-Bahn station at the western end of his newly opened street. Unemotional and in a hurry, he’d used his elbows to fight his way through this weeping crowd — one of the disappointed liberators shouted an insult at his back — but for the very first time, Richard got to school in under twenty minutes.

Peter told him that for the Incas the center of the universe wasn’t a point but a line where the two halves of the universe meet. Is this the scene unfolding before Richard’s eyes at the entrance to the asylum seekers’ residence? And are the two groups of people facing off here something like the two halves of a universe that actually belong together, but whose separation is nonetheless irrevocable? Is the rift dividing them in fact a bottomless chasm; is that why such powerful turbulences have been released? And is it a rift between Black and White? Or Poor and Rich? Stranger and Friend? Or between those whose fathers have died and those whose fathers are still alive? Or those with curly hair and those with straight? Those who call their dinner fufu and those who call it stew? Or those who like to wear yellow, red, and green t-shirts and those who prefer neckties? Or those who like to drink water and those who prefer beer? Or between speakers of one language and another? How many borders exist within a single universe?

But when she's asleep he likes to sit down beside her bed and make one further attempt to get to the bottom of what has seemed to him the greatest riddle in all the history of mankind: how processes, circumstances, or events of a general nature--such as war, famine, or even a civil servant's salary that fails to increase along with the galloping inflation--can infiltrate a private face. Here they turn a few hairs gray, there devour a pair of lovely cheeks until the skin is stretched taut across angular jawbones; the secession of Hungary, say, might result in a pair of lips bitten raw in the case of one particular woman, perhaps even his own wife. In other words, there is a constant translation between far outside and deep within, it's just that a different vocabulary exists for each of us, which no doubt explains why it's never been noticed that this is a language in the first place--and in fact, the only language valid across the world and for all time. ... It feels to him as if the top layer is crumbling away all at once from everything he sees and encounters, a layer that once prevented him from comprehending, and finally he is able to recognize what lies below. Minds = landscapes, ... what a happy coincidence that these observations happened to fall into his hands: the hands of one who has taken it upon himself to investigate this primeval tongue ...

Ein Bild, das bleibt immer so, wie es ist und nur soweit das Bild reicht, bliebt alles so, wie es ist.

Of course he's always know that the Odyssey and the Illiad are stories that were passed on orally long before Homer - or whoever it was - wrote them down. But never before has the connection between space, time, and words revealed itself so clearly as at this moment. The bad drop of the desert shows it off in sharp relief, but really it's always just the same all over the world: without memory, man is nothing more than a bit of flesh on the planet's surface.

superb group of mind-mindful novelists at work today: Philip Roth and Martin Amis, Cynthia Ozick, Jenny Erpenbeck, John Banville, V. S. Naipaul, and J. M. Coetzee—to start.

Where did you grow up? What’s your native language? What’s your religious affiliation? How many people are in your family? What did the apartment or house you grew up in look like? How did your parents meet? Was there a TV? Where did you sleep? What did you eat? What was your favorite hiding place when you were a child? Did you go to school? What sort of clothing did you wear? Did you have pets? Did you learn a trade? Do you have a family of your own? When did you leave the country of your birth? Why? Are you still in contact with your family? What was your goal when you left home? How did you say your goodbyes? What did you take with you when you left? What did you think Europe would be like? What’s different? How do you spend your days? What do you miss most? What do you wish for? If you had children who were growing up here, what would you tell them about your homeland? Can you imagine growing old here? Where do you want to be buried?

Wenn Vernunft wirklich feurige Materie wäre, wie von Diogenes als Erstem angenommen wurde, so sähe man es doch am besten daran, wie über die Jahrhunderte hinweg der eine Nachdenkende die Gedanken eines anderen aufnimmt und versucht, ihnen das Eigene hinzuzufügen und sie so am Leben zu halten.

Bis heute setzen die älteren Frauen sich vor Sonnenaufgang, noch in der Nacht, unter freiem Himmel hin und singen: Auch wenn einer reich und vermögend ist, ist der Tod ihm nahe. Der Tod ist größer als die Zeit, er umfängt sie. Gerade jetzt sendet er seine Pfeile aus, Sie gehen nieder in die Mitte der Herde.

Vieles von dem, was Richard an diesem Novembertag, einige Wochen nach seiner Emeritierung, liest, hat er beinahe sein ganzes Leben über gewusst, aber erst heute, durch den kleinen Anteil an Wissen, der ihm nun zufliegt, mischt sich wieder alles anders und neu. Wie oft wohl uns einer das, was er weiß, noch einmal lernen, wieder und wieder entdecken, wie viele Verkleidungen abreißen, bis er die Dinge wirklich versteht bis auf die Knochen? Reicht überhaupt eine Lebenszeit dafür aus?

Ein Freund, ein guter Freund, das ist das Beste, was es gibt au der Welt

Was alles mag da wohl noch im Dunkel seines Gedächtnisses warten, aber nie wieder aus der Abstellkammer hervorgeholt werden, bevor der Laden irgendwann endgültig zugemacht wird?

War der Graben zwischen ihnen tatsächlich bodenlos tief und entfesselte deshalb so heftige Turbulenzen? Und verlief er zwischen Schwarz und Weiß? Oder zwischen Arm und Reich? Oder zwischen Fremd und Freund? Oder zwischen denen, deren Väter nicht mehr am Leben waren, und denen, deren Väter noch lebten? Oder zwischen denen mit den geringelten Haaren und denen mit glatten? Oder zwischen denen, die ihr Essen Fufu nannten, und denen, die Gulasch dazu sagten? Oder zwischen denen, die gerne gelbe und rote und grüne T-Shirts anzogen, und denen, die sich lieber einen Schlips umbanden? Oder zwischen denen, die gern Wasser tranken, und jenen, die Bier lieber mochten? Oder zwischen der einen Sprache und der anderen? Wieviele Grenzen gab es überhaupt in einem einzigen Universum? Anders gefragt, was war die wirkliche, eine, entscheidende Grenze? Vielleicht die zwischen tot und lebendig?

Die Zeit macht etwas mit einem Menschen, weil ein Mensch keine Maschine ist, die man an- und ausschalten kann. Die Zeit, in der ein Mensch nicht weiß, wie sein Leben ein Leben werden kann, füllt so einen Untätigen vom Kopf bis zu den Zehen.

when she's asleep he likes to sit down beside her bed and make one further attempt to get to the bottom of what has seemed to him the greatest riddle in all the history of mankind: how processes, circumstances, or events of a general nature – such as war, famine, or even a civil servant's salary that fails to increase along with the galloping inflation – can infiltrate a private face. Here they turn a few hairs gray, there devour a pair of lovely cheeks until the skin is stretched taut across singular jawbones; the secession of Hungary, say, might result in a pair of lips bitten raw in the case of one particular woman, perhaps even his own wife. In other words, there is a constant translation between far outside and deep within, it's just that a different vocabulary exists for each of us, which no doubt explains why it's never been noticed that this is a language in the first place – and in fact, the only language valid across the world and for all time. -- Jenny Erpenbeck, The End of Days (2012), trans. Susan Bernofsky, 2014, p. 73.

Tutte le volte che compare un "nonostante tutto" - questa è la sua esperienza - le cose si fanno interessanti.

Quante volte bisogna tornare a imparare, a scoprire e a riscoprire ciò che già si sa, quanti travestimenti bisogna strappar via per poter penetrare le cose fino all'osso?

Dove va un uomo, quando non sa dove andare?

To investigate how one makes the transition from a full, readily comprehensible existence to the life of a refugee, which is open in all directions — drafty, as it were — he has to know what was at the beginning, what was in the middle, and what is now. At the border between a person’s life and the other life lived by that same person, the transition has to be visible — a transition that, if you look closely enough, is nothing at all.

He can’t remember, but he still knows exactly where to find it on his bookshelf, books are willing to wait, he says whenever visitors ask if he’s read all the books on his shelves. . . .

without memory, man is nothing more than a bit of flesh on the planet’s surface. Then they rake the grass and carry the garden furniture from the terrace to beneath the roof of the shed, they deflate the rubber dinghy that Richard hasn’t tried out a

Wein, alles, was sich gekühlt besser hält, wurde in diesen Katakomben gehandelt.

Eine Frau sitzt an einem Schreibtisch und schreibt ihren Lebenslauf. Der Schreibtisch steht in Moskau. Es ist das dritte Mal in ihren Leben, dass sie einem Lebenslauf schreiben muss, und es kann sein, dass dieser deschriebene Lebenslauf den Lauf ihres wirklichen Lebens beendet, dass dieses Schriftstück, wenn man so will, sich in eine Waffe verwandelt, die sie sich selbst schreibt. Es kann auch sein, dass das Schriftstück aufbewahrt wird, and dass sie von dem Moment an, in dem sie es abgegeben hat, dagegen anleben muss, oder sich dessen würdig erweisen, oder die dunkelsten Vermutungen, die sich daraus ergeben, bestätigen. Im letzteren Falle wären diese Buchstaben ebenfalls, nur mit kleinerer oder größerer Verspätung, so etwas wie eine verschleppte Krankheit, an der sie irgendwann doch zugrundegehen muss. Hat ihr Mann nicht immer gesagt, auf dem Theater hängt niemals ein Gewehr an der Wand, mit dem nicht auch igendwann einer schießt? Sie denkt an die »Wildente« von Ibsen, und wie sie geweint hat, als der Schuss endlich fiel. Vielleicht aber gelingt es ihr, und deshalb sitzt sie ja überhaupt nur da, darauf hofft sie, und deshalb nur sucht sie so lange nach den richtigen Worten, vielleicht gelingt es ihr, sich mit dem Schreiben eine Rettung zu schreiben, und den Lauf ihres Lebens, durch ein paar Buchstaben mehr oder weniger, zu verlängern oder wenigstens zu erleichtern, auf nichts anderes kann sie hoffen, als darauf, sich durchs Schreiben ins Leben zurückzuschreiben. Aber was sind die richtigen Worte? Käme sie mit einer Wahrheit weiter als mit einer Lüge? Und welche der vielen möglichen Wahrheiten oder Lügen soll sie dann nehmen? Wenn sie doch nicht weiß, wer lesen wird, was sie schreibt. Eines nur nimmt sie nicht an, nämlich dass diese Schriftstück nichts weiter als ein beschriebenes Blatt Papier sein wird, abgeheftet, vergessen. Das ist in einem Land, in dem jedes Kind und jede Aufwaschfrau und jeder Soldat Gedichte von Lermontow und Puschkin auswendig hersagen kann, nicht sehr wahrscheinlich.

Could these long years of peacetime be to blame for the fact that a new generation of politicians apparently believes we’ve now arrived at the end of history, making it possible to use violence to suppress all further movement and change? Or have the people living here under untroubled circumstances and at so great a distance from the wars of others been afflicted with a poverty of experience, a sort of emotional anemia? Must living in peace — so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world — inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war?

Is the rift dividing them in fact a bottomless chasm; is that why such powerful turbulences have been released? And is it a rift between Black and White? Or Poor or Rich? Stranger and Friend? Or between those whose father's have died and those whose father's are still alive? Or those with curly hair and those with straight? Those who call their dinner fufu and those that call it stew? Or those who like to wear yellow, red, and green t-shirts and those who prefer neckties? Or those who like to drink water and those who prefer beer? Or between speakers of one language or another? How many borders exist within a single universe? Or, to ask it differently, what is the one true, crucial border? ... it's just a matter of a few pigments in the material that's known as skin in all the languages of the world, meaning that the violence on display here is not at all the harbinger of a storm in the center of the universe but is in fact due merely to an absurd misunderstanding that has been dividing humankind and preventing it from realizing how enormously long the lifespan of a planet is compared to the life and breath of any one human being. Whether you clothe your body in hand-me-down pants and jackets from a donation bin, brand-name sweater's, expensive or cheap dresses, or uniforms with a helmet and visor- underneath this clothing, every one of us is naked and must surely, let's hope, have taken pleasure in sunshine and wind, in water and snow, have eaten or drunk this and that tasty thing, perhaps even have loved someone and been loved in return before dying one day.

In peacetime it was poverty, during the war it was the front that kept pushing people before it like a long row of dominos, people slept in other people’s beds, used other people’s cooking utensils, ate the stores of food that other people had been forced to leave behind. It’s just that the rooms became more crowded the more the bombs fell.

With her eyes, which in this other half of the city are a stranger’s eyes, she sees how every conceivable need is catered for by some product or other in the shops, the freedom to consume seems like an India rubber wall to her, separating people from any yearnings that might transcend their personal and momentary wishes. Is she about to be another customer?

Time has the power to separate us, not only from others, but also from ourselves—a fact that’s hard to grasp. We know that time also separates us from circumstances that might have turned us into very different people.

An empty space is a space for questions, not for answers. And what we don't know is infinite.

There was suddenly a lot of talk of freedom, but I couldn't make much of this word freedom, which floated freely in all sorts of sentences. Freedom to travel? (But will we be able to afford it?) Or freedom of opinion? (But what if no one cares about my opinion?) Freedom to shop? (But what happens when we're finished shopping?) Freedom wasn't given freely, it came at a price, and the price was my entire life up to that point. The price was that everything that had been called the present until then was now called the past.

There is nothing better for a child than to grow up at the ends of the earth.

[...] dass die Erde eher wie eine Müllhalde ist, die verschiedenen Zeiten fallen im Dunkeln, den Mund mit Erde gefüllt, übereinander her, die eine begattet die andre, ohne fruchtbar zu sein, und der Fortschritt besteht immer wieder nur darin, dass die, die auf dieser Erde herumgehen, von alldem nichts wissen.

Doch gerade in diesem Moment, in dem alle die Angst, die sie gehabt haben, oder die vielmehr sie gehabt hat, schnell aus ihren Gedanken wischen wollen, gerade da geht auf einmal das Licht aus, und einen Moment lang sind alle Menschen in diesem Raum schwarz.

Wenn man verstehen will, was einer meint oder sagt, muss man im Grunde das, was er meint oder sagt, immer schon wissen. Ist dann ein gelungener Dialog nur Wiedererkennen? Und das Verstehen nicht etwas ein Weg, sondern vielmehr ein Zustand?

Home! he'd cried out like a child that would give anything not to be seeing what it was seeing, but precisely in this one brief moment in which he hid his face in his hands, as it were, even the dutiful German official had known that home would never again be called Bavaria, the Baltic coast or Berlin, home had been transformed into a time that now lay behind him, Germany had been irrevocably transformed into something disembodied, a lost spirit that neither knew nor was forced to imagine all these horrific things. H-o-m-e. Which thou must leave ere long. After he had swum his way through a brief bout of despair, the German official had applied to retain his post. those others, though, the ones who had fled their homeland before they themselves could be transformed into monsters, were thrust into homelessness by the news that reached them from back home, not just for the years of their emigration but also, as seems clear to her now, for all eternity, regardless of whether or not they returned.

Das Mädchen ist auf der Suche, es versucht zu sprechen, aber wie durch eine löchrige Dekoration scheint durch das Vokabular, an dem nichts eigentlich Falsches ist, immer eine schwarze, gähnende Leere hindurch.

Quasi avesse tenuto una breve rappresentazione teatrale, l'avvocato si mette una mano sul cuore e si inchina. Poi apre la porta a due battenti e dice: Permettono? a indicare che il colloquio è finito. Richard sa benissimo anche lui che fuori sono in attesa molti rumeni, vietnamiti e africani. Passando con Ithemba davanti al guardaroba e vedendo un cilindro sulla mensola per cappelli, gli viene quasi il dubbio che questo avvocato dalle sembianze di un gufo sia arrivato in volo, dal lontano Ottocento, direttamente nel ventunesimo secolo – in questo secolo nuovo e tuttavia così vecchio, con i suoi interminabili flussi di esseri umani che, dopo essere sopravvissuti alla traversata in un mare vero, rischiano ora di affogare nei fiumi e nei mari di carte.

Your own property is in peril when your neighbor’s house burns.

The older he gets, the more grateful he is to have just as little idea as anyone else what is in store.

Een arts kan heel in het algemeen de mensheid proberen te dienen, maar het staat hem uiteraard ook vrij zich alleen in dienst te stellen van een bepaald deel van de mensheid. Een zekere dr. Thaler bijvoorbeeld had ongeveer tweehonderd jaar geleden in Wenen de uit Nigeria afkomstige Soliman na diens dood met de toestemming van keizer Franz de huid afgestroopt, had de man die in een veldslag het leven van de vorst van Lobkowicz had gered, een neger genaamd Soliman, de huid afgestroopt, had de leraar van de vorsten van Liechtenstein, een zwarte genaamd Soliman, de huid afgestroopt, had de vrijmetselaar van de loge De Ware Eendracht, een Moor genaamd Soliman, de huid afgestroopt, had bij wijze van spreken de broeder van de vrijmetselaars Mozart en Schikaneder, de borg van de naar opname in de loge strevende wetenschapper Ignaz von Born, een Afrikaan genaamd Soliman, de huid afgestroopt, had een gehuwde Wener, die zes talen vloeiend sprak, wiens dochter later getrouwd was met baron Von Feuchtersleben en wiens kleinzoon Eduard in het begin van de negentiende eeuw naam maakte als dichter, de huid afgestroopt, had een gezien man uit de hogere Weense kringen, die lang geleden weliswaar een Afrikaans kind was geweest, genaamd Soliman, de huid afgestroopt, had een mens die in het begin van zijn leven op de slavenmarkt was ingeruild voor een paard en later was doorverkocht naar Messina, genaamd Soliman, om kort te gaan: een voormalige slaaf van een laag ras genaamd Soliman de huid afgestroopt. Hij had de huid daarna gelooid, op een corpus van hout gespannen en, tegen de wens van diens dochter, die verzocht 'de huid van haar vader aan haar te overhandigen teneinde hem volgens de regels ter aarde te kunnen bestellen', tegen de wens van die dochter haar opgezette vader ter stichting van het Weense publiek in een vitrine op de vierde verdieping van het Keizerlijk Naturaliënkabinet gezet. Het veren rokje waarmee de Moor was uitgedost, was - wetenschappelijk niet geheel correct - afkomstig van Zuid-Amerikaanse indianen, maar het exotische aspect van het preparaat kwam daardoor veel beter tot zijn recht. Heel even stelde Richard zich voor dat in een vitrine in het staatsmuseum van Caïro bijvoorbeeld de opgezette archeoloog Heinrich Schliemann zou staan, gekleed in een Spaans stierenvechterskostuum of in Mongoolse klederdracht van schapenleer en zijde.

Leidt de vrede, waar de mensheid te allen tijde naar heeft verlangd en die tot nu toe maar in zo weinig delen van de wereld is verwezenlijkt, er alleen toe dat hij niet wordt gedeeld met degenen die er hun toevlucht zoeken, maar zo agressief wordt verdedigd dat hij er zelf bijna uitziet als een oorlog?

lesson

But if this prosperity couldn’t be attributed to their own personal merit, then by the same token the refugees weren’t to blame for their reduced circumstances. Things might have turned out the other way around. For a moment, this thought opens its jaws wide, displaying its frightening teeth.

Strange, she thinks, all these years a little bit of my life has gone on existing in this stranger’s head. And now he’s given it back to me.

Kairos, the god of fortunate moments, is supposed to have a lock of hair on his forehead, which is the only way of grasping hold of him. Because once the god has slipped past on his winged feet, the back of his head is sleek and hairless, nowhere to grab hold of.

Coca-Cola has succeeded, where Marxist philosophy has failed, at uniting the proletarians of all nations under its banner.