Bette Greene · 203 pages
Rating: (14.6K votes)
“Even if you forget everything else I want you to always remember that you are a person of value, and you have a friend who loved you enough to give you his most valued possession.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“Like the Bible tells us, when a man will lay down his life for a friend, well, then there ain't no greater love in this here world than that.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“And marking off time struck me as something like counting empty spaces—spaces you know can't ever be filled.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“It seems to me that a man who is incapable of humor is capable of cruelty.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“What do you know about sooner or later? Is a moment only a moment when you're in pain?”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“A person's got to think, otherwise that person's no better than a trained seal balancing a ball on his nose. If only that seal could think, he'd know he was making a thousand children laugh.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“Keep in mind that life produces no maestros, only students of varying shades of ineptitude.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“I wondered if a blessing is still a blessing if it lasts for only a little while.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“Fun, like champagne bubbles, can't completely fill you up.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“I believe that love is better than hate. And that there is more nobility in building a chicken coop than in destroying a cathedral.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“The ways of the Lord are filled with wonder and mystery.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“When people's emotions are involved they don't want to listen.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“Folks keep forgetting that wishing don't make nothing so, but prayer sometimes do.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“The secret is in absolutely refusing to let the river beat you down. If I had to, I'd measure my progress in inches. One more inch I've swum—one less inch to swim. Once you know the secret, then nobody's river can bring you down.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“Sometimes when a person be thinking about one thing it don't mean they is mad about another thing.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“One thing you can say about him is that he's appreciative. He's just happy having someone to sit with.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“The secret is in absolutely refusing to let the river beat you down.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“But you, Pearl, never liked anything once it was yours.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“My father chose acquiescence and life rather than resistance and death. Not a very admirable choice, but a very human one.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
“My deception was believed because it was built on a foundation of truth … Hitler's first layer is an undeniable truth, such as: The German workers are poor. The second layer is divided equally between flattery and truth: The German worker deserves to be prosperous. The third layer is fabrication: The Jews and the Communists and Jews have stolen what is rightfully yours.”
― Bette Greene, quote from Summer of My German Soldier
Bette Greene
Born place: in Memphis, Tennessee, The United States
Born date June 28, 2018
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“Think about it: Why should we care whether what makes us happy is just an electrical impulse in our brain or something funny that we see some fool do on TV? Does it matter what makes you smile? Wouldn't you rather be happy for no reason than unhappy for good reasons?”
― Terry Trueman, quote from Stuck in Neutral
“You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
― Max Ehrmann, quote from Desiderata: Words For Life
“Trains in these parts went from East to West, and from West to East . . .
On either side of the railway lines lay the great wide spaces of the desert - Sary-Ozeki, the Middle lands of the yellow steppes.
In these parts any distance was measured in relation to the railway, as if from the Greenwich meridian . . .
And the trains went from East to West, and from West to East . . .”
― Chingiz Aitmatov, quote from The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
“I also read that spending time with a pedophile can be like a drug high. There was this girl who said it’s as if the pedophile lives in a fantastic kind of reality, and that fantasticness infects everything. Kind of like they’re children themselves, only full of the knowledge that children don’t have. Their imaginations are stronger than kids’ and they can build realities that small kids would never be able to dream up. They can make the child’s world… ecstatic somehow. And when it’s over, for people who’ve been through this, it’s like coming off of heroin and, for years, they can’t stop chasing the ghost of how it felt. One girl said that it’s like the earth is scorched and the grass won’t grow back. And the ground looks black and barren but inside it’s still burning.”
― Margaux Fragoso, quote from Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir
“It was strange to see that no matter what color the clothing first appeared—and they were all hues, from earthy copper and garnet to the blue of sky and shadow—in different light all turned to some shade of green, as if there were a third plane to the cloth’s weaving beyond the warp and weft.”
― Ellen Kushner, quote from Thomas the Rhymer
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