A Woman In Berlin Quotes & Sayings

You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without despair or loss, there is no hope. — Haruki Murakami

(Cleaning women: You will get a lot of liberated women. First stage is a CR group; second stage is a cleaning woman; third, divorce.) — Lucia Berlin

when life goes down, don't worry. sometimes you have to go down to learn the things that are down — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Someone knocked on the door. "Come in!" Barabas called. The door swung open and Derek stuck his head in. "Hey, do you have any duct tape?" He saw me, stepped back, and closed the door without a word. Well. "Coward," Barabas said, loud enough for Derek to hear. — Ilona Andrews

In Oakland, he saw two slum children sword fighting on a slag heap. In Palo Alto, a puffy fop in bursting jodhpurs shouted from the door of a luxurious stable, "My horse is soiled!" While one chilly evening in Union Square he listened to a wild-eyed young woman declaim that she had seen delicate grandmothers raped by Kiwanis zombies, that she had seen Rotarian blackguards bludgeoning Easter bunnies in a coal cellar, that she had seen Irving Berlin buying an Orange Julius in Queens. — Thomas McGuane

I love houses, all the things they tell me, so that's one reason. I don't mind working as a cleaning woman. It's just like reading a book. — Lucia Berlin

If a baker makes fifty absolutely identical cookies, he must be using the same pastry mold for all of them. — Jostein Gaarder

Some lady at a bridge party somewhere started the rumor that to test the honesty of a cleaning woman you leave little rosebud ashtrays around with loose change in them, here and there. My solution to this is to always add a few pennies, even a dime. — Lucia Berlin

When you make feeling good a priority, that magnificent frequency will radiate and touch everyone close to you. — Rhonda Byrne

Sally wasn't crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband, Alfonso, had left her after twenty years for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no, she wouldn't ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her.

"They can just wait until I die. I'll be dead soon, probably next year..." Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound. — Lucia Berlin

Give the young half a chance and they will create their own future, they will even create their own heaven and earth. — Ellen Glasgow

Blood family, that's something we get dealt. Sometimes we get a bad hand. Not much way around it. You just have to grow up and get more family. The kind you get to pick out yourself. — Catherine Ryan Hyde