quotes from all the light we cannot see
10 Top Quotes from All the Light We cannot See by Anthony Doerr
quotes from all the light we cannot see
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1. “Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth. Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its branches as if toward the lips of God. And when God stops whispering, they become desperate for someone who can put things right.” (pg. 63) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
2. “You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.” (pg. 84) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
3. “Walk the paths of logic. Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Every lock its key.” (pg. 111) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
4. “This, she realizes, is the basis of his fear, all fear. That a light you are powerless to stop will turn on you and usher a bullet to its mark.” (pg. 160) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
5. “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” (pg. 264) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
6. “It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world—what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?” (pg. 364) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
7. “Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.” (pg. 376) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
8. “To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air.” (pg. 390) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
9. “We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.” (pg. 468) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
10. “To men like that, time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really, he thinks, it’s a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it. Fighting for it. Working so hard not to spill one single drop.” (pg. 476) Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
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