Give it a try. Bellybutton.” “Bellybutton doesn’t make me think of anything.” “Dig deep.” “In my bellybutton?” “In your brain, Oskar.” “Uh.” “Bellybutton. Bellybutton.” “Stomach anus?
I found it, and now I can’t look for it.
She had been married to your father for twelve years. I had known her for fifteen years. It was the first time she told me she loved me.
It’s possible you can’t afford to care, but it’s certain you can’t afford not to care.
That’s what’s at the bottom of all of this, and what each person has to ask himself. How much suffering will you tolerate for your food?
Children bury their dead parents, because the dead need to be buried. Parents do not need to bring their children into the world, but children need to bring their parents out of it.
Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I’ve discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film.
But I didn’t know, just like I didn’t know it was the last time Dad would ever tuck me in, because you never know.
She was the tree and also the river flowing away from the tree, ‘There are worse things,’ she said, ‘worse than being like us. Look, at least we’re alive,’ I could see that she wanted those last words back, but the current was too strong.
The day emptied.
I walked through Long Island City, Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.
It wasn’t too late to turn around, before I got to the place I couldn’t come back from.
The longer your mother and I lived together, the more we took each other’s assumptions for granted, the less was said, the more misunderstood.
She went home with her father, the center of me followed her, but I was left with the shell of me.
She let the dust accumulate on her shoulders.
It was only then that I observed that the key was reaching toward the bed. Because it was relatively heavy, the effect was small. The string pulled incredibly gently at the back of my neck, while the key floated just a tiny bit off my chest. I thought about all the metal buried in Central Park. Was it being pulled, even if just a little, to the bed?
In its eyes I was sure I saw some form of understanding, but I didn’t see forgiveness.
Die Ohnmacht des Einzelnen ist der Grund, aus dem alle es versuchen muessen.
When I had thought I was dying at the base of the Loschwitz Bridge, there was a single thought in my head: Keep thinking. Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me.
Everything she did reminded me of someone else.
Entweder suchen wir uns aus, was wir veraendern, oder wir werden diejenigen sein, auf die sich Veraenderungen auswirken.