Anthony Doerr Quotes

What the war did to dreamers.

How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?

Forgetting, he is learning, is how the world heals itself.

But God is only a white cold eye, a quarter-moon poised above the smoke, blinking, blinking, as the city is gradually pounded to dust.

Hope is the pillar that holds up the world.

You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.

He sweeps her hair back from her ears; he swings her above his head. He says she is his émerveillement. He says he will never leave her, not in a million years.

The things that look fixed in the world, child — mountains, wealth, empires — their permanence is only an illusion. We believe they will last, but that is only because of the brevity of our own lives. From the perspective of God, cities like this come and go like anthills.

You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history.

Do you think, Madame, that in heaven we will really get to see God face-to-face?” “We might.” “What if you’re blind?” “I’d expect that if God wants us to see something, we’ll see it.

Your problem, Werner,” says Frederick, “is that you still believe you own your life.

But have heart. Hope is something that can be very dangerous but without it life would be horribly dry. Impossible, even. Take it from me.

"Seventy-six years old," she whispers, "and I can still feel like this? Like a little girl with stars in my eyes?"

The world as it is is enough.

There is pride, too, though — pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That’s how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane. The drain moans; the cluttered house crowds in close.