Jan-Philipp Sendker · 400 pages
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“It is our own flaws that we are least ready to forgive in others.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“We are responsible not only for what we do, but also for what we fail to do.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Is it true that we can count the moments in which something really happens in our lives? Do we notice it right away, or only in hindsight?”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“What do violent individuals fear most? Violence? I should say not! By what do the cruel and selfish feel most threatened? All of them fear nothing as much as they fear love.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“To forgive, one must love and be loved. Only those who forgive can be free. Whoever forgives is a prisoner no more.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“How many times must we be loved in order to be happy?”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“What are people with guns most afraid of? Other people with guns? No! What do violent individuals fear most? Violence? I should say not! By what do the cruel and selfish feel most threatened? All of them fear nothing as much as they fear love.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“According to her we are each our own greatest mystery, and our life’s work is to solve ourselves. None of us ever succeeds, she says, but it is our duty to follow the trail. Regardless of how long it is or where it might”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“We often discover only many years later whether life and the stars were smiling upon us or not. Life can take the most surprising turns. What”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“In the hell of the well-intentioned.” That was how he referred to the charity balls my mother helped organize.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“By how many people must we be loved in order to be happy? Two? Five? Ten? Or maybe only one? The one who gives us sight. Who takes away fear. Who breathes meaning into our existence. There”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“What’s more, they had taught him to be friendly and helpful to others. Not because he owed it to them. Because he owed it to himself.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Not all truths are explicable. Not all explicable things are true.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Loneliness is the most severe punishment. We are not built to handle it. I”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Images can fade. Sounds and smells disappear from our memory. But our heart forgets nothing. A child’s soul knows everything.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Why do we so often put off the things that matter most to us?”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“HOW THIN IS the wall between us and madness? No one knows what it is made of. No one knows how much pressure it can withstand. Until it gives.
We all live on the edge.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Besides, I have no point of comparison," he declared, his eyes still closed. "That is the secret of a happy life.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“The world was full of signs. One needed only to know how to see and interpret them.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“THE FIRST TIME she left the house with her sleeping son in her arms, still unsteady on her legs, gripping the railing tightly, she surveyed the yard, astonished. It was at once familiar and strange. Something was different, though she could not immediately put her finger on it. The morning sun beamed through the bushes. The leaves of the banana plants seemed greener, their fruit larger and yellower. The hibiscus and the bougainvillea had never looked so beautiful. A warm breeze caressed her skin. Maung Sein was perched on a log below her, chopping kindling. Stroke by stroke he would split branches as thick as a fist. The uniformity of his movements radiated something infinitely reassuring. Nu Nu looked at Ko Gyi in her arms. He had her nose. Her mouth. Her cinnamon skin. She cautiously took one of his little hands. It was warm. And would always remain so. Suddenly he opened one blinking eye, and then quickly the other. He had her eyes, too, without a doubt. Ko Gyi regarded his mother earnestly, intently. She smiled. His deep brown eyes did not move. They looked for a long time at each other. Then a quiet smile drifted across his face. No one had ever smiled at her that”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Laughter has many meanings here. We laugh when something is unpleasant. When we are afraid. When we are angry.” “Is it a kind of”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“—Find out who you were. Why”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“THERE ARE MEMORIES we cannot escape. We take them with us wherever we go, however far, like it or not. They pursue us or accompany us in good times and in bad. We smell their scents. We hear their sounds. We delight in them or dread them. By day and by night. My”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Were there people who simply did not belong together? Who loved each other, but who were nevertheless happier when they were apart? Certainly”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Themes so vast that only composers could even approach them. If at all. All other artists must practice humility before them.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Anyone who has been the victim of violence carries that violence inside himself. Anyone”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“Anyone who has been betrayed carries that betrayal inside himself. How”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“To live means to suffer. Nothing is permanent.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
“The master is mistaken: to live is to love.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, quote from A Well-Tempered Heart
Jan-Philipp Sendker
Born place: in Hamburg, Germany
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“Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.”
― Azar Nafisi, quote from Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
“If you ever know a man who tries to drown his sorrows, kindly inform him his sorrows know how to swim.”
― Pittacus Lore, quote from The Power of Six
“Of all the islands he'd visited, two stood out. The island of the past, he said, where the only time was past time and the inhabitants were bored and more or less happy, but where the weight of illusion was so great that the island sank a little deeper into the river every day. And the island of the future, where the only time was the future, and the inhabitants were planners and strivers, such strivers, said Ulises, that they were likely to end up devouring one another.”
― Roberto Bolaño, quote from The Savage Detectives
“What do you mean, Phib?" asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little glass, where, like most of us, she saw - not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant image in her own brain.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby
“Of evils current upon earth The worst is money. Money 'tis that sacks Cities, and drives men forth from hearth and home; Warps and seduces native innocence, And breeds a habit of dishonesty.”
― Sophocles, quote from The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus/Antigone
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