Quotes from Summer of My German Soldier

“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

About the author

Popular quotes

“And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Jurassic Park

“. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.”
― John Boyne, quote from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“A sister they had, Galadriel, most beautiful of all the house of Finwë; her hair was lit with gold as though it had caught in a mesh the radiance of Laurelin.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from The Silmarillion

“The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibilty of lying about it”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Cat's Cradle

“In the words of a best seller, ‘You’ve nothing on me.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Murder on the Orient Express

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.