All The Light We Cannot See Quotes
"The sea is only a receptacle for all the prodigious, supernatural things that exist inside it. It is only movement and love; it is the living infinite."
"Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever."
"We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not."
"The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light."
"Every summer for the whole life of that plant, its leaves caught what light they could and transformed the sun’s energy into itself. Into bark, twigs, stems. Because plants eat light, in much the way we eat food."
"Live faithfully, fight bravely and die laughing."
"The trick is figuring out where your interests are."
"Only through the hottest fires can purification be achieved."
"Only through the harshest tests can God’s chosen rise."
"The greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is."
"Delight itself is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has wandered by himself into a Brazilian forest."
"That chunk of coal was once a green plant, a fern or reed that lived one million years ago, or maybe two million, or maybe one hundred million."
"Consider a single piece glowing in your family’s stove."
"We are young, we are steadfast, we have never compromised, we have so many castles yet to storm."
"It’s like military control, Marie. That’s enough questions for now."
"We will stay here awhile and then we will go back to our apartment and the pinecones will be right where we left them."
"I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me."
"Supply and demand. There is always paperwork, of course; some official up the chain catches a whiff and wants a percentage."
"Prosperity depends on ferocity. The only things that keep your precious grandmothers in their tea and cookies are the fists at the end of your arms."
"Once you’re done with the model, does that mean I can go out?"
"In Saint-Malo, people are fined for locking their doors, for keeping doves, for hoarding meat."
"Marie-Laure counts every day she has been shut up in Etienne’s house."
"The sun pulls too. He says that around the islands, the tides make funnels that can swallow boats whole."
"The labyrinth of Saint-Malo has opened onto a portal of sound larger than anything she has ever experienced."
"Your problem, Werner, is that you still believe you own your life."
"Entropy is the degree of randomness or disorder in a system."
"Nine steps down and she’s on the sand and the twenty thousand sounds of the ocean engulf her."
"She collects pinecones dropped by trees who knows how far away."
"Her greatest pleasure is to walk to the north end of the beach at low tide."
"Only then does she stop wondering how much of his letter was true."
"Madame Manec’s energy, Marie-Laure is learning, is extraordinary."
"She burgeons, shoots off stalks, wakes early, works late."
"In such moments Madame seems like a great moving wall of rosebushes."
"The mothers of Saint-Malo used to tell their children: Sit up straight."
"Sit up straight. Mind your manners. Or an Englishman will come in the night to cut your throat."
"She misses Papa, Paris, Dr. Geffard, the gardens, her books, her pinecones."
"But over these past few weeks, her existence has become tolerable."
"Madame Manec says. "You, Madame Guiboux, your son repairs their shoes."
""Nothing so bold as all that. But we could do smaller things. Simpler things."
""Don’t you ever get tired of believing, Madame? Don’t you ever want proof?""
""You must never stop believing. That’s the most important thing."
"A scientist’s work is determined by two things: his interests and those of his time."
"The only light comes from the amber filament inside Werner’s signal meter."
"If the Frenchman employs the same transmitter that used to reach all the way to Zollverein, the antenna will be big."
"Etienne begged his jailers, the guardian of the fort, dozens of his fellow prisoners."
"She reins in her panic. Important not to assume the worst."
"The ground quakes. The organs inside his body shake."
"But curses are not real. Earth is all magma and continental crust and ocean."
"In the end, it was Werner who pretended there were no choices."