Best 12 quotes of Jessica Shattuck on MyQuotes

Benita held no reverence for anything old or historic. History was horrible, a long, sloppy tail of grief. It swished destructively behind the present, toppling everyone's own personal understanding of the past.

Benita set the letter down. Connie - her dear Connie, whom she had never even said good-bye to. Whom she had hated - really hated- for so long. But he had always been strong. He had lived his life on a plane of grand ideals and all-encompassing rights and wrongs. His view had been much longer than the trappings of his own life. And she had been the little mouse who could see no farther than her own nose, stumbling over roots and stones, oblivious to the oncoming storm.

For so long Marianne and Albrecht and many of their friends had known Hitler was a lunatic, a leader whose lowbrow appeal to people's most selfish, self-pitying emotions and ignorance was an embarrassment for their country.

He is against politics in general and longs for the restitution of the monarchy. They have seen nothing but rioting and inflation in the five years since Wilhelm II abdicated. And Ania knows not to mention the Communists. Her father has not recovered from the shock of their brief takeover of Bavaria, which, for a few weeks in 1919, became the Bavarian Soviet Republic. If he begins on the subject, no one will hear of anything else for days. For Doktor Fortzmann all was better under the kaiser.

In the future, Martin will recall this night as the first time -- and one of the only times -- he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief and guilt.

She pictures love as a pond to be stepped into, swum around in, and then climbed out of and toweled off before getting too chilly.

She will rue her lack of curiosity, her ability to see things only as she wanted to, for the rest of her life.

...the children had been elaborately and painfully put to bed (there was homework to help with, night-lights to leave on, snacks to bring upstairs, as if they were being prepared for a frightening and arduous journey rather than the luxury of sleep).

The music, Beethoven's Ninth, opened with a blast: violins, trumpet, an explosion loud enough to knock thought and worry from the mind. It was reminiscent of war - thundering footsteps, the rumble of tanks, the screech & crack of planes overhead, an exploding bomb. The audience sat at attention, gripping their seats. Something small and gentle might have lost them. Something tender and they might have begun to cry and never stopped. They were there, but they were not strong. They would do anything to protect themselves from sadness.

There is not enough air in the room for Marianne and Elizabeth to share. They have learned this the hard way, but acceptance of the fact has made life easier. Now they see each other twice a year, for a weekend in the early summer and for the American holiday of Thanksgiving

Years later, as a professor, Martin would try to find the words to articulate the power of togetherness in a world where togetherness had been corrupted -- and to explore the effect of the music, the surprising lengths the people had gone to to hear it and to play it, as evidence that music, and art in general, are basic requirements of the human soul. Not a luxury but a compulsion. He will think of it every time he goes to a museum or a concert or a play with a long line of people waiting to get inside.

You are not alone, she thought. Don't be afraid. You are beloved.