Jenna Blum Quotes & Sayings

There is, of course, no way of knowing for certain. There is no way to know what they felt, those millions who were given no chance at survival. I can only speculate. And even I, a Jew - yes, I am a Jew, Dr. Swenson, and my entire family was murdered by the Nazis - even I can only imagine a pale facsimile of what it must have been like. But I do know that there is no justification. No possible rationalization for what the Nazis did, for what civilian Germans permitted and encouraged to happen. — Jenna Blum

How could she tell him that we come to love those who save us? — Jenna Blum

Heimat. The word mean home in German, the place where one was born. But the term also conveys a subtler nuance, a certain tenderness. One's Heimat is not merely a matter of geography; it is where one's heart lies. — Jenna Blum

My dad, Bob Blum, used to dash across Grand Central's main terminal catwalk several times daily as a young CBS correspondent, running copy from newsroom to studio and back - because CBS' first broadcasts were from Grand Central Terminal. The pictures on people's television sets used to shake when the trains came in! — Jenna Blum

My novella, 'The Lucky One,' is inspired in part by my dad and also by a Holocaust survivor I interviewed for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation. — Jenna Blum

We are all ashamed in one way or another. Who among us is not stained by the past? — Jenna Blum

For one of the odd things about death, Trudy has discovered, is that in its wake one must go about business as usual; it seems heartless and wrong, but now that the rituals of mourning have been attended to, the sole task left to Trudy is to try and comprehend the enormity of thes sudden change. — Jenna Blum

Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends. — Jenna Blum

I've been fascinated with severe weather since I was four, when I saw a tornado at night in my mom and grandmother's southeast Minnesota hometown while everyone else was asleep - an experience I encoded in 'The Stormchasers.' — Jenna Blum

Grub Street Writers is the reason I've stayed in Boston. I started teaching for Grub back in 1997, when founder Eve Bridburg, a Boston University M.A. alumna, as I am, kindly gave me my first job out of grad school. — Jenna Blum

She can never tell him what she started to say: that we come to love those who save us. For although Anna does believe this is true, the word that stuck in her throat was not save but shame. — Jenna Blum

Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off ... — Jenna Blum

'The Lucky One' features a young concentration camp survivor named Peter Rashkin - who's about the age my dad was when he started at CBS - working at the Oyster Bar, trying to acclimate to his new country and outrun the memories of the daily he left behind. — Jenna Blum

I have people in my family with bipolar disorder, and for years I've watched them struggle with the disorder's extreme moods and often devastating consequences. — Jenna Blum

When I lived in Minneapolis in my twenties, and my mom lived there, too, I used to take her 'storm chasing' - by which I mean I'd see a pulsing blob of radar on The Weather Channel and make her drive us toward the storm. — Jenna Blum

The past is past. And better it remain so. — Jenna Blum

From this vantage point in the summer, the countryside below is a dreaming checkerboard over which it seems that one could, with a running start, spread one's arms and fly. — Jenna Blum