At The Wolf's Table Quotes
"Survival, Rosa, is all a matter of chance."
"Life was perilous, the whole world lay in ambush."
"It’s like we’re peeking into Hitler’s innards."
"I would give my very life for the Führer."
"That day, surrounded by the white walls of the lunchroom, I became one of Hitler’s food tasters."
"We were tectonic plates that shifted and collided."
"Germans love children. Hens, at times, eat their young. Living creatures appalled me."
"I had declared my willingness to die for the Führer."
"Every day the bus carried me down eight kilometers of road until reaching the bend at Gross-Partsch, my place of banishment."
"Of all people, it had been Holler who said it—Holler, whose anxiety left him with intestinal distress and who, if he withdrew into the corner where we kept the bucket, would leave behind an unbearable stench."
"Our suitcases were packed, to make a quick escape if need be."
"I convinced myself that one day Gregor would return from the war. We would fix the pipes in my family home and have a child—or, better, two. In their sleep they would breathe slowly, with their mouths open, like Pauline."
"I opened the bedside table drawer, took out all of Gregor’s letters, reread them one by one. It was like hearing his voice, pretending he was near."
"Even the Führer, for his part, struggled with the product of his digestion."
"I was a widow. No, no, I wasn’t. Gregor wasn’t dead. We just didn’t know where he was or if he would ever return."
"People can grow accustomed to anything—to digging coal out of the cramped tunnels in mines, rationing the need for oxygen."
"Of those months I remember nothing, apart from the day on which the purple clover in the fields, glimpsed from the window of the bus on the way to Krausendorf, awakened me from my monastic everyday existence."
"I hadn’t imagined the potential consequences: a summary trial, a summary execution? I too wanted to disappear, that was all."
"The masses are like women: they don’t want someone to defend them, but someone to command them."
"Maybe it was a form of surveillance. Maybe he spent each night outside a different home, keeping an eye on the food tasters."
"I WENT TO bed early. You were right, Joseph, it’s the springtime, it’s wearing me out."
"Lying on my back, I studied the wooden beams in the ceiling and with my finger traced the pattern on the sheet."
"I know a doctor," Elfriede said, her expression indignant.
"There’s nothing else to be done," Heike said.
"We waited for Heike at her house with her children and Leni."
"Then again, others’ pain doesn’t sting as much as our own."
"I poured myself some water from the carafe, drank a sip, lingered by the bedside table with the glass in my hand."
"THE PREGNANCY HAD been a mistake. There was nothing divine in creating life or taking it—it was simply something humans did."
"When I went to the window I saw only darkness, stared out until the moonlight carved the outlines of the trees."
"I was afraid it would shock her, but instead she had taken in the explanation without blinking an eye."
"We have never been Nazis, he would shout."
"FOR TWELVE YEARS we had lived under a dictatorship yet almost hadn’t noticed."
"Elfriede took her to a gynecologist and didn’t allow anyone to go with them."
"He wanted to blackmail me. Everyone will know who you are."
"What did he think I hadn’t yet gone to bed?"
"You think my mattress is any more comfortable? Besides, my room is little more than a cubbyhole."
"I wasn’t afraid I would die. Don’t make fun of me."
"The ability to adapt is human beings’ greatest resource, but the more I adapted, the less human I felt."
"With that child I was forming an alliance. He wouldn’t hurt me."
"They were mine, those groans—guttural, indecent, inhuman-sounding. What of me remained human?"
"I would cup my hand over my cheek in shock, would whimper that it wasn’t a question of being Nazis, politics had nothing to do with it."
"It was restlessness. I clutched the pillow, the cotton rough, combustible."
"It was a soldier’s march. Questions crowded my mind. I silenced them."
"I was hypnotized by the blood on my fingertip."
"Everything considered, it turns out to be their lucky night. The frogs are put back in their place around his lodgings."
"I was struck by her liberty in speaking like that about a man who wasn’t her husband."
"Don’t worry," Heike shouted to her son, and Ursula did the same.
"Why did you go so far out?" Heike was shouting. "I told you not to!"
"Thank you for beating me to it," I said. "I was already exhausted."
"When the war is over," Heiner said, "I’m going to become a movie director."
"I no longer know how to describe it, to describe love, any other way."
"It’s just that he was alive. And determined to get revenge."
"I’ll stay by your side," I said, resting my hand on my chest theatrically.
"Sometimes knowing is a burden. And she’d rather not give her that burden."
"That’s good. You know, we were all worried. What’s wrong, then?"
"In the hallway I felt like I was walking through water."
"It’s not my fault," I heard him say as I reached the SS guard waiting at the barracks entrance.
"Yes, it is," I replied without turning around. "It’s our fault."
"You should have thought about it first," I wanted to tell her, but didn’t.
"How dare I? I was no better than she was."
"I’m surprised at you, Berliner. Didn’t you know? All it takes is a major disappointment or a body weakened from stress and you skip your period."
"No, we’ve never even been there. This was the only way to get out, though."
"Dear little fox, no goose for you, with a little mouse why not make do?"
"I can’t bear surviving any longer, Albert. Sooner or later I want to live."
"If you’ve come all the way here, it means I really am about to die."
"We spent a few years together—that’s not bad. And afterward you had the chance to have a family."