Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho.
- "oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray cloudy days like this. I felt as if nature was in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul. On the other hand, when the sun appeared the children would come out to play in the streets, and everyone was happy that it was such a lovely day, and then I would feel terrible, as if that display of exuberance in which I could not participate was somehow unfair." Pages 38-39
- "Nothing," said one member of the group. "she was just passing. She's standing right here, but she's still just passing." The whole group burst into laughter. Veronika assumed an ironic smile, turned and moved off, so that no one would notice that her eyes were filling with tears. She went straight out into the gardens without bothering to put on a coat or jacket. A nurse tried to persuade her to come back inside, but another appeared soon after and whispered something in his ear. The two of them left her in peace, in the cold. There was no point in taking care of someone who was condemned to die. She was confused, tense and irritated with herself. She has never allowed herself to be provoked; she had learned early that whenever a new situation presented itself, you had to remain cool, quiet and distant. Those crazy people, however had managed to make her feel shame, fear, rage, a desire to murder them all, to wound them with words she hadn't dared to utter." Page 42
- "In adolescence she thought it was too early to choose. Now in young adulthood, she was convinced it was too late to change" Page 43
- "Veronika watched the woman, still smiling, being strapped to the bed" Page 45
- "Outside the barred window, the sky was thick with stars, and the moon in its first quarter was rising behind the mountains. Poets loved the full moon; they wrote thousands of poems about it, but it was the new moon that Veronika loved best because there was still room for it to grow, to expand, to fill the whole of it's surface with light before it's inevitable decline." Page 63
- "She had managed to appear utterly independent when she was in fact, desperately in need of company." Page 67
- "At the moment she hated everything: herself the world's the chair in front of her, the broken radiator in one of the corridors, the people who were perfect criminals. She was in a mental hospital and so she could allow herself to feel things people usually hide." - Page 68
A Woman In Berlin: A Diary - Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, Author Unknown.
- “Our radio’s been dead for four days. Once again we see what a dubious blessing technology really is. Machine with no intrinsic value, worthless if you can’t plug them in somewhere. Bread, however is absolute. Coal is absolute. And gold is gold whether you’re in Rome, Peru or Breslau. But radios, gas stoves, central heating, hot plates, all these gifts of the modern age—they’re nothing but dead weight if the power goes out. At the moment we’re marching backwards in time. Cave dwellers.” - Page 5
- "Yes, we've been spoiled by technology. We can't accept doing without loudspeakers or rotary presses. Handwritten placards and whispered proclamations just don't carry the same weight. Technology has devalued the impact of our own speech and writing. In the old days one man's call to arms was enough to set off an uprising-a few hand printed leaflets, ninety-five these nailed to a church door in Wittenberg. But today we need more, we need bigger and better, wider repercussions, mass produced by machines and multiplied exponentially." Page 20
- These days I keep noticing how my feelings towards men--and the feelings of all the other woman--are changing. We feel sorry for them; they seem so miserable and powerless. The weaker sex. Deep down we woman are experiencing a kind of collective disappointment. The Nazi world--ruled by men, glorifying the strong man--is beginning to crumble, and with it the myth of "Man." In earlier wars men could claim the privilege of killing and being killed for the fatherland was thiers and theirs alone. Today we woman, too, have a share. That has transformed us, emboldened us. Among the many defeats at the end of this war is the defeat of the male sex." Page 43