Quotes from The Boy in the Suitcase

Lene Kaaberbøl ·  313 pages

Rating: (28.7K votes)


“She felt as if she was standing at the edge of an abyss, but she was in no way counting on God to rescue her. On the contrary. I don’t believe in any of it. Not anymore.”
― Lene Kaaberbøl, quote from The Boy in the Suitcase


“If the boy did have a good and loving mother somewhere, surely they would find her.

God only knew how she wanted to believe it. Every single day, she practiced her detachment skills, trying not to care about everything that was wrong with the world. Or rather...to care, but in a suitably civilized manner, with an admirable commitment that might still be set aside when she came home to Morten and her family, complete with well-reasoned and coherent opinions of the humanist persuasion. Right now she felt more like one of those manic women from the animal protection societies, with wild hair and ever wilder eyes. Desperate.”
― Lene Kaaberbøl, quote from The Boy in the Suitcase


“Only as long as one did what one always did would one remain relatively invisible.”
― Lene Kaaberbøl, quote from The Boy in the Suitcase


“Nina couldn’t help wondering if the lives of other people were really as simple as they looked. As simple, and as happy.”
― Lene Kaaberbøl, quote from The Boy in the Suitcase


“And the real beauty of it all for the cynical exploiters was that ordinary people didn’t care. Not really. No one had asked the refugees, the prostitutes, the fortune hunters, and the orphans to come knocking on Denmark’s door. No one had invited them, and no one knew how many there were. Crimes committed against them had nothing to do with ordinary people and the usual workings of law and order. It”
― Lene Kaaberbøl, quote from The Boy in the Suitcase



“She knew precious little about Lithuania, she realized, and her ideas had run along the lines of Soviet concrete ghettos, TB-infected prisons, and a callous mafia. Somehow,”
― Lene Kaaberbøl, quote from The Boy in the Suitcase


“Os pecadores eram bem mais interessantes que as pessoas comuns – a própria Bíblia atestava isso.”
― Lene Kaaberbøl, quote from The Boy in the Suitcase


About the author

Lene Kaaberbøl
Born place: in Copenhagen, Denmark
Born date March 24, 1960
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Popular quotes

“I was used to being invisible. People rarely saw me, and if they did, they never looked close. I wasn't shiny and charming like my brother, stunning and graceful like my mother, or smart and dynamic like my friends. That's the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Saint Anything


“Beyond all of that, I could see the wall I had seen from inside the train, the wall that runs along the train line. I assumed that there, behind it, was the west, and I was right. I could have been wrong, but I was right.' If she had any future it was over there, and she needed to get to it.
I sit in the chair exploring the meaning of dumbstruck, rolling the word around in my mind. I laugh with Miriam as she laughs at herself, and at the boldness of being sixteen. At sixteen you are invulnerable. I laugh with her about rummaging around for a ladder in other people's sheds, and I laugh harder when she finds one. We laugh at the improbability of it, of someone barely more than a child poking around in Beatrix Potter's garden by the Wall, watching out for Mr McGregor and his blunderbuss, and looking for a step-ladder to scale one of the most fortified barriers on earth. We both like the girl she was, and I like the woman she has become.
She says suddenly, 'I still have the scars on my hands from climbing the barbed wire, but you can't see them so well now.' She holds out her hands. The soft parts of her palms are crazed with definite white scares, each about a centimeter long.
The first fence was wire mesh with a roll of barbed wire along the top.”
― Anna Funder, quote from Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall


“(...) Poco después del enorme éxito de "La mujer de blanco", se me preguntó cuál era el secreto de mi éxito; yo, modestamente, le dije a mi interlocutor:

1. Busca una idea central.
2. Idea unos personajes.
3. Deja que los personajes desarrollen los incidentes.
4. Empieza la historia por el principio.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Drood


“Poverty is apt to strike suddenly like influenza, it is well to have a few memories of extravagance in store for bad times.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Travels With My Aunt


“MUTTER COURAGE Mir scheint, ich hab zu lang gehandelt.”
― Bertolt Brecht, quote from Mother Courage and Her Children


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