The Girl You Left Behind Quotes
"This is a long time since I had any discussion about art."
"I am well aware of that. There will be sufficient supplies delivered from early next week."
"You are welcome to see the rooms, Herr Kommandant. But you will find that your predecessors have left us with little."
"We have not touched one grain of rice, Herr Kommandant."
"I’m sure I’ll be able to do you justice on another occasion."
"I was content in Paris, once I had recovered from my initial loneliness."
"But sometimes I think we wear our photographs out by looking at them."
"I wanted him to examine my skin, the hollows of my throat, the secret glowing underside of my hair."
"I watched him shamble around, as if he were older than he was."
"‘I knew you were in there,’ he said, his voice soft."
"‘I could paint you every day of my life,’ he murmured into my skin."
"‘We will sing. It will drown the chimes until this evening.'"
"You must be eating well at the hotel, these days. Everybody else is keen to get their rations."
"I had to have a little dig around till I found the spare key in your desk drawer."
"Buildings should reveal their purpose, and their structure."
"I don’t have the personality for office work."
"It’s not our business. We’re just here for recovery."
"You hear everything in here. Most customers don’t stop talking when waiters are around."
"How am I meant to describe such a drawing perfectly? I was ten when we were forced from our house."
"I saw Jasmine in the Pig’s Foot the other night."
"I’m sorry. It’s just that Mr Nowicki had gone on and on about how personal this painting was to the family."
"You’re allowed. He uh sounds like quite a guy."
"She’s my favourite thing in this house. Actually, she’s my favourite thing in the whole world."
"I wanted to move on. I had wanted to move on with Paul."
"I can’t pretend David isn’t part of my past."
"He’s the perfect man. He’s straightforward, caring, attentive."
"It's possible I might have talked about David a bit."
"Liv has cleaned the Glass House from top to bottom."
"No, this is another Paul McCafferty, an entirely different Paul McCafferty."
"I can’t remember! You can’t come in here and tell me I have to justify ownership of my own painting."
"I’m starting to understand why his work – if it is his work – might be the subject of a restitution request."
"I think we can break the rules for something we love."
"It’s historically wrong, obviously. I mean, there were no Nazis in the First World War."
"You think that makes it right? You know what it’s like to have the thing you love ripped away from you?"
"They keep us weak through lack of food, so that we will not try to escape. Most are now grateful merely to stay alive."
"I felt like an animal to be herded so, as if I were no longer human."
"There is not always food. Perhaps our luck is changing."
"It’s impossible to understand how a painting might be taken into somebody’s custody without understanding the climate of the time."
"Sophie doesn’t belong with them. They just see pound signs."
"It’s a lot of money. If this Kandinsky is worth millions, it’s in our interests to get the best deal possible."
"If I side with your case everyone in this company stands to lose their jobs."
"Loneliness hits her with an almost physical force."
"This house is not transparent and pure as David had wished."
"The worst thing that could have happened to me already happened."
"Sometimes, she realizes suddenly, it is simply a matter of blind faith."
"Just for carrying on, really. Sometimes, my darling girl, that’s heroic in itself."
"All human life came through, and most of them shared a few words with me, trading jokes or comments over the mugs of steaming tea."
"You know, I think David would have rather liked him."
"You can’t mope around, babe. Got to get over it."
"I like knowing everything there was to know about The Buttered Bun, and hearing about the lives of the people who came through it."
"I hadn’t thought that as well as the obvious fears about money, and your future, losing your job would make you feel inadequate, and a bit useless."
"You might miss the people you worked with, no matter how little you had in common with them."
"Unemployment had been a concept, something droningly referred to on the news in relation to shipyards or car factories."
"I’m not good with old people, Syed. My granddad lives at home since he had his strokes, and I can’t cope with him."
"But I have always preferred to think that seven, eight years after the war, free of responsibility for anybody else, perhaps they finally felt safe enough to move on, and simply packed up and did so."