Quotes from The Quest for Christa T.

Christa Wolf ·  185 pages

Rating: (654 votes)


“You love tenderly and warmly, but your love is like friendship. That's why you have good friends, you're sociable, sympathetic toward people. Until this dissatisfaction comes over you-you know what I'm talking about. Then you become moody, can even repulse people who are close to you, even people who love you, you know why. Those are bad times when everything goes cold, and they follow the times of great love...”
― Christa Wolf, quote from The Quest for Christa T.


“Wann - wenn nicht jetzt Wann soll man leben wenn nicht in der Zeit die einem gegeben ist”
― Christa Wolf, quote from The Quest for Christa T.


“Einmal im Leben zur rechten Zeit sollte man an Unmögliches geglaubt haben.”
― Christa Wolf, quote from The Quest for Christa T.


“The happy times of pristine thinking and open minds, always favorable for beginnings, belonged now to the past, and we knew it.”
― Christa Wolf, quote from The Quest for Christa T.


“Coldness in everything. It comes from a long way off; it gets into everything. One must get out of the way before it reaches the core. If it does that, one won't feel even the coldness any more. Do you see what I mean?”
― Christa Wolf, quote from The Quest for Christa T.



About the author

Christa Wolf
Born place: in Landsberg, Germany
Born date March 18, 1929
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Popular quotes

“The alley is a pitch for about twenty women leaning in doorways, chain-smoking. In their shiny open raincoats, short skirts, cheap boots, and high-heeled shoes they watch the street with hooded eyes, like spies in a B movie. Some are young and pretty, and some are older, and some of them are very old, with facial expressions ranging from sullen to wry. Most of the commerce is centred on the slightly older women, as if the majority of the clients prefer experience and worldliness. The younger, prettier girls seem to do the least business, apparent innocence being only a minority preference, much as it is for the aging crones in the alley who seem as if they’ve been standing there for a thousand years.

In the dingy foyer of the hotel is an old poster from La Comédie Française, sadly peeling from the all behind the desk. Cyrano de Bergerac, it proclaims, a play by Edmond Rostand. I will stand for a few moments to take in its fading gaiety. It is a laughing portrait of a man with an enormous nose and a plumed hat. He is a tragic clown whose misfortune is his honour. He is a man entrusted with a secret; an eloquent and dazzling wit who, having successfully wooed a beautiful woman on behalf of a friend cannot reveal himself as the true author when his friend dies. He is a man who loves but is not loved, and the woman he loves but cannot reach is called Roxanne.

That night I will go to my room and write a song about a girl. I will call her Roxanne. I will conjure her unpaid from the street below the hotel and cloak her in the romance and the sadness of Rostand’s play, and her creation will change my life.”
― Sting, quote from Broken Music


“Nobody can hate man more than man.”
― Karel Čapek, quote from R.U.R.


“Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.”
― Carl Sagan, quote from Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence


“It has become something to her, that memory — something she can take out in dismal times and stare into like a crystal ball disclosing not presages but reminders. She holds it in her palm like a captured ladybug and thinks, Well ain’t I been some places, ain’t I partook in some glorious happenings wanderin my way between heaven and earth. And if I ain’t seen everything there is to see, it wasn’t for lack of lookin.
Blind is the real dead.”
― Alden Bell, quote from The Reapers are the Angels


“She was telling me that I had a life of disappointment before me if I continued to love him as I did. A love that is too strong can turn poisonous and bring great unhappiness. And then, what is the remedy? Can you unlearn your heart's desire? Can you stop loving someone? Easier to drown yourself; easier to take the lover's leap.”
― Alma Katsu, quote from The Taker


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