Quotes from The Storyteller

“Just a tiny little pain,
Three days of heavy rain,
Three days of sunlight,
Everything will be alright,
Just a tiny little pain.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“My child, I know you're not a child
But I still see you running wild
Between those flowering trees.
Your sparkling dreams, your silver laugh
Your wishes to the stars above
Are just my memories.

And in your eyes the ocean
And in your eyes the sea
The waters frozen over
With your longing to be free.

Yesterday you'd awoken
To a world incredibly old.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.

You had to kill this child, I know.
To break the arrows and the bow
To shed your skin and change.
The trees are flowering no more
There's blood upon the tiles floor
This place is dark and strange.

I see you standing in the storm
Holding the curse of youth
Each of you with your story
Each of you with your truth.

Some words will never be spoken
Some stories will never be told.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.

I didn't say the world was good.
I hoped by now you understood
Why I could never lie.
I didn't promise you a thing.
Don't ask my wintervoice for spring
Just spread your wings and fly.

Though in the hidden garden
Down by the green green lane
The plant of love grows next to
The tree of hate and pain.

So take my tears as a token.
They'll keep you warm in the cold.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.

You've lived too long among us
To leave without a trace
You've lived too short to understand
A thing about this place.

Some of you just sit there smoking
And some are already sold.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.
This is the age you are broken or turned into gold.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“Sometimes I don't even know if I'm extremely happy or extremely sad. It happens a lot when I think of you”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“If you have known someone your whole life, you can see them in the dark.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“In love, there is no criticism. In love, there is no rationality”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“Go away princess. Leave your outlaw alone. You won't change him... go away, Anna, far away, and don't ever come back. The fairy tale doesn't have a happy ending.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“I can’t be forgiven so I am not asking you for forgiveness. We lost each other, and we will never find each other again.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“If we lose each other, we’ll meet where it’s spring.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“It was a disaster … It was the most wonderful thing in the world.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“Next to that dragon Micha had wirtten: 'KIS EacH OthER'.
Abel looked at Anna. Anna looked at Abel.
'She is the little queen,' said Abel, 'in our fairy tale, at least.'
'One must obey the queen,' said Anna.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“And the snow that fell onto the roof in winter... it fell softly... softly... and it covered the house, the armchair, the books, the children's voices. It covered Anna and Abel, covered their parallel world, and everything was finally, very, very quiet.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“In a dream, in a fairytale, nothing has to be explained, everything happens of its own accord.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“Everybody knew everything now. Or did everybody know nothing? Nobody knew anything... Nobody could know everything.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“That was how she saw the storyteller for the last time - in an absolutely silent world, in a staircase. He'd hit his target.
When she fell into darkness, she knew that she would never see him again.
She'd love him to the very end.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“Where does someone go when he dies?', 'When does fear end?', 'Where are all the single socks that disappeared in the washing machine?”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“But what does he want my heart for?" the little queen asked.
"He just wants to own it," replied the sea lion. "That is enough. He wants to look on its beauty and know that his hands alone can touch it.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“I am not staying with the murderer," she said, her words muffled by his jacket. "I am not staying with the victim Abel Tannatek or the culprit Abel Tannatek. I am staying with the storyteller.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“I don't know what happened between the two of you. I don't know if it can be forgiven. The hardest thing always is to forgive yourself.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“Nothing was perfect, but everything was all right. The light was never just blue.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“What does that mean?' Anna whispered. 'What does that all mean?
Abel ran his fingers through her hair again, and his hand wandered down and stayed on her throat. 'It means everything,' he whispered back. 'And nothing.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“That cloak of love you were wearing—he’s torn it to shreds, undoing the seams of trust that held it together. How can you ever wear those shreds?”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“There was the place where all the shouted words fall into the water. They’re too weak to make it from shore to shore. I saw the words underwater, millions of them; they’re lying there on the bottom of the sea, a whole load of wrecked sentences, sentences that never reached their destination, questions from one side and answers from the other…”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“Possibly, she thought, the pool of answers was limited. There are fewer answers in the world than questions, and if you ask me now why that is so, I must tell you that there is no answer to that question.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“The words that I will have to find for that explanation will be sharp and they will hurt, much worse than the thorns of roses.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“He looked at the gun. "Aren't you afraid?"
"Of course I am," Anna said. "Of course I'm afraid. But that doesn't help."
He shook his head. "No," he said, "it doesn't help to be afraid. Bad things happen anyway. You're right.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“You didn't see us," she said to Anna...
"I was... lost in thought," Anna replied.
"What were you thinking about?"
"You," Anna said. "Isn't that strange? I was thinking of you two so hard that I didn't see you.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“I'm doing a thousand new things in spite of myself," he said. "It's not easy, you know, to jump over your shadow.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“And she imagined how things could be later. It was stupid, but the picture just appeared in her mind. Abel and Magnus shoveling snow together... in twenty years, in thirty. Magnus had grown old, his broad back still strong but bent from time, his hair nearly white at the temples. And Abel... Abel was a different Abel, an adult one, one who was absolutely self-confident and didn't let his eyes dart around the room at lunch, as if he were caught in trap.
"Nonsense," she whispered. "Thirty years? You don't stay with the person you meet at seventeen... what kind of fairy tale are you living in, Anna Leemann?"
And still the picture seemed right.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“They saw him walk away, leave a world he'd never really been part of. They saw him pull his hat down low and get onto his bike. He forgot the Walkman's earplugs. Maybe, Anna thought, he didn't need them anymore; maybe the white noise had finally made it into his head.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

“Abel put his hands on her shoulders. "You're cold. You're shivering."
She nodded. "It's not important..."
"Sure it is," and then, in a very low voice, with a private kind of smile, he said, "Rose girl, I told you the branches would wither and you would freeze. You wanted to stay on board..."
Anna nodded. "I'm staying.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller

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Popular quotes

“Ignorance has never been the problem. The problem was and continues to be unexamined confidence in western civilization and the unwarranted certainty of Christianity. And arrogance. Perhaps it is unfair to judge the past by the present, but it is also necessary.

If nothing else, an examination of the past—and of the present, for that matter—can be instructive. It shows us that there is little shelter and little gain for Native peoples in doing nothing. So long as we possess one element of sovereignty, so long as we possess one parcel of land, North America will come for us, and the question we have to face is how badly we wish to continue to pursue the concepts of sovereignty and self-determination. How important is it for us to maintain protected communal homelands? Are our traditions and languages worth the cost of carrying on the fight? Certainly the easier and more expedient option is simply to step away from who we are and who we wish to be, sell what we have for cash, and sink into the stewpot of North America.

With the rest of the bones.

No matter how you frame Native history, the one inescapable constant is that Native people in North America have lost much. We’ve given away a great deal, we’ve had a great deal taken from us, and, if we are not careful, we will continue to lose parts of ourselves—as Indians, as Cree, as Blackfoot, as Navajo, as Inuit—with each generation. But this need not happen. Native cultures aren’t static. They’re dynamic, adaptive, and flexible, and for many of us, the modern variations of older tribal traditions continue to provide order, satisfaction, identity, and value in our lives. More than that, in the five hundred years of European occupation, Native cultures have already proven themselves to be remarkably tenacious and resilient.

Okay.

That was heroic and uncomfortably inspirational, wasn’t it? Poignant, even. You can almost hear the trumpets and the violins. And that kind of romance is not what we need. It serves no one, and the cost to maintain it is too high.

So, let’s agree that Indians are not special. We’re not … mystical. I’m fine with that. Yes, a great many Native people have a long-standing relationship with the natural world. But that relationship is equally available to non-Natives, should they choose to embrace it. The fact of Native existence is that we live modern lives informed by traditional values and contemporary realities and that we wish to live those lives on our terms.”
― Thomas King, quote from The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

“„But don't you think it's unfair to be with someone just because the past you share with them?”
― Adriane Leigh, quote from The Mourning After

“There was nothing quite like being put in the friend zone by your pregnant girlfriend.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Rome

“I don’t love or hate humans. I respect them. They shape themselves, in a way that we angels do not. They tell lies and sleep around and curse, and they try to define themselves so valiantly. Who am I? they keep asking. Why am I here?”
― Cynthia Hand, quote from Radiant

“When healthy people fall in love, they buy a bunch of flowers or an engagement ring and go and Do Something About It. When poets fall in love, they make a list of their loved one’s body parts and attach similes to them... These lists are almost universally awkward.”
― Mark Forsyth, quote from The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

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