“If you think love means secrecy, then you don’t understand what love is at all.”
“Loving someone is one thing, and being loved is another, but being loved by the one you love - that's paradise. And I don't think I shall ever have it. Some men aren't capable of loving you back.”
“You and I are impossible." she said.
"No." Gently, he brushed the hair back from her face. "We are what's real and true.”
“Do you always worry about everyone else before yourself?"
"I don't know. I suppose."
"It's a miserable habit...”
“He reached out with his good hand, cupping her chin.
"Gretchen, don't you realise by now I would give up everything to be with you?”
“She stood on the edge of night, that sliver of gray between darkness and dawn, that razor-thin line separating the first part of her life and whatever lay ahead.”
“The man she had loved as a father was a fraud. He kissed the back of her hands and advocated war; he had played with her on the carpet with toy soldiers, and all along he had been planning the extinction of an entire people.
There would be no resettlement in the east. No carefully orchestrated exodus of Jews from Germany, no trains wending through the mountains, carrying Jews to another home in another country. There would be no peaceful expulsion. It was obvious now; Hitler had said it himself tonight. The internal purification of the Jewish spirit is not possible.
She understood. In Hitler's Germany, the Jews would have no place at all.”
“Then he cradled her face, touching her so tenderly she could scarcely breathe, and brought his face to hers until their lips met in a kiss that burned her mouth.”
“No, not anonymous. Maybe she didn't matter enough to the Brauns, certainly not enough to her mother and Uncle Dolf, and definitely not at all to Reinhard. But she mattered to herself. And that was all that needed to be true. She would figure something out”
“His proximity should disgust her, but it only confused her.”
“Those who look for a reason to fear will find one, and those without reason will follow.”
“Taro knelt and tightened the leather laces of his prosthetic leg. Buckles and straps kept the wood attached to his ankle.”
“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire and live by love though the stars walk backwards.”
“He stared at me. "She liked you, boy." The intensity of his voice and eyes made me blink.
"Yes," I said.
"She did it for you, you know."
"What?"
"Gave up her self, for a while there. She loved you that much. What an incredibly lucky kid you were."
I could not look at him. "I know."
He shook his head with a wistful sadness. "No, you don't. You can't know yet. Maybe someday..."
I knew he was tempted to say more. Probably to tell me how stupid I was, how cowardly, that I blew the best
chance I would ever have. But his smile returned, and his eyes were tender again, and nothing harsher
than cherry smoke came out of his mouth.”
“now. Put the past behind you and think of it as somewhere you once visited, and possibly didn’t like very much. “Do”
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