Quotes from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day.”
― Heather Morris, quote from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“What they all share is fear. And youth. And their religion. Lale tries to keep his mind off theorising about what might lie ahead. He has been told he is being taken to work for the Germans, and that is what he is planning to do. He thinks of his family back home. 'Safe'. He has made the sacrifice, has no regrets. He would make it again and again to keep his beloved family at home, together.”
― Heather Morris, quote from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“Well, Lale, a man who lectures in taxation and interest rates can't help but get involved in the politics of his country. Politics will help you understand the World until you don't understand it anymore, and then it will get you thrown into a prison camp. Politics and religion both”
― Heather Morris, quote from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“What has this place done to us? What has it made us become? How much longer can we go on? She thought it was all ending today.”
― Heather Morris, quote from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“Lale smiles at him. ‘Not what I was expecting either.’ ‘Where do you think we’re going?’ ‘It doesn’t matter. Just remember, we are here to keep our families safe”
― Heather Morris, quote from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“The girls who work there dream of a place far away where there is plenty of everything and life can be what they want it to be. They have decided Canada is such a place.”
― Heather Morris, quote from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“the girl’s arm as gently as he can, the man takes her face in his hand and turns it roughly this way and that. Lale looks”
― Heather Morris, quote from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“occasionally nods off against his shoulder; Lale doesn’t push him away. He is just one among countless young men stuffed into”
― Heather Morris, quote from The Tattooist of Auschwitz

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“You go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall and go, "Her. I'll try and be her. I'll try and be her - but here." You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. You are like the robot Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, crying, "More input! More input for Johnny 5! as you rifle through books and watch films and sit in front of the television, trying to guess which of these things that you are watching - Alexis Carrington Colby walking down a marble staircase; Anne of Green Gables holding her shoddy suitcase; Cathy wailing on the moors; Courtney Love wailing in her petticoat; Dorothy Parker gunning people down; Grace Jones singing "Slave to the Rhythm" - you will need when you get out there. What will be useful. What will be, eventually, you?

And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone.

And some versions of you will end in dismal failure - many prototypes won't even get out the front door, as you suddenly realize that no, you can't style-out an all-in-one gold bodysuit and a massive attitude problem in Wolverhampton. Others will achieve temporary success - hitting new land-speed records, and amazing all around you, and then suddenly, unexpectedly exploding, like the Bluebird on Coniston Water.

But one day you'll find a version of you that will get you kissed, or befriended, or inspired, and you will make your notes accordingly, staying up all night to hone and improvise upon a tiny snatch of melody that worked.

Until - slowly, slowly - you make a viable version of you, one you can hum every day. You'll find the tiny, right piece of grit you can pearl around, until nature kicks in, and your shell will just quietly fill with magic, even while you're busy doing other things. What your nature began, nature will take over, and start completing, until you stop having to think about who you'll be entirely - as you're too busy doing, now. And ten years will pass without you even noticing.

And later, over a glass of wine - because you drink wine now, because you are grown - you will marvel over what you did. Marvel that, at the time, you kept so many secrets. Tried to keep the secret of yourself. Tried to metamorphose in the dark. The loud, drunken, fucking, eyeliner-smeared, laughing, cutting, panicking, unbearably present secret of yourself. When really you were about as secret as the moon. And as luminous, under all those clothes.”
― Caitlin Moran, quote from How to Build a Girl

“I've never understood why people choose to do the things that are hardest for them.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap

“He’d tried to explain it to her, how accidents happen but we really are safe. But there was, already, the sense that nothing he said touched what was really bothering her, which was the realization that you can’t stop bad things from happening to other people, other things. And that would be hard forever. He’d never quite gotten used to it himself.”
― Megan Abbott, quote from The Fever

“In what world is Armani here seventeen?” Cristiano shrugged unapologetically. “They feed us better in Italy.”
― A.E. Kirk, quote from Demons in Disguise

“You can plan for things, work towards them for years, and yet they never materialize. Or you can just happen to be in the right place at the right moment, and everything falls into place. If you want to believe in something like Fate, she's a capricious character. Sometimes she stand there blocking the doorway you were born to pass through, and sometimes she takes you by the hand and leads you through the minute you poke your nose out. And the stars gaze down and keep their counsel.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Little Star

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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.

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