Quotes from Anna Seghers

What can I expect here? You know the fairy tale about the man who died, don't you? He was waiting in Eternity to find out what the Lord had decided to do with him. He waited and waited, for one year, ten years, a hundred years. He begged and pleaded for a decision. Finally he couldn't bear the waiting any longer. Then they said to him: 'What do you think you're waiting for? You've been in Hell for a long time already.

When you're young and healthy you can recover quickly from a defeat. But betrayal is different—it paralyzes you.

Not only can what others are suffering be a consolation while we are suffering, but even knowing what others suffered long ago can be consoling.

For the first time back then, I thought about everything seriously. The past and the future, both equally unknowable, and also this ongoing situation that the consulates call "transitory" but that we know in everyday language as "the present.

Death was just as close, but not behind him; it was everywhere. It was inescapable; he felt death's physical presence—as if death itself were something alive. Like in the old pictures, a creature that can hide behind a bed of asters or behind a baby carriage and can come out and touch you.

Und wenn er auch nur noch die Kraft für eine einzige winzig kleine Bewegung hatte, auf die Freiheit hin, wie sinnlos und nutzlos diese Bewegung auch sein mochte, er wollte diese Bewegung doch noch gemacht haben.

She had never been able to stand her husband, though not for one minute in their married life had she permitted this to make her unhappy. Only people who are fond of somebody can ever be unhappy, she had told her daughter before her wedding.

What magic was this, brewed from equal parts of age-old memories and total oblivion. One could have believed that the last war these people had fought had left only happy memories, had carried in its wake nothing but joy and prosperity. Women and girls were smiling as if their sons and lovers were invulnerable.

Before the eyes of the SA unit that had not yet marched off, Beutler crawled the last stretch without help. Not on his knees, but rather, perhaps because he'd been kicked, sideways so that his face was turned up. And now as the man crept past him, Bunsen, looking down, noticed what was special about the face. It was laughing. The recaptured prisoner lay there in his bloody smock, with blood in his ears, and his large white teeth showing, and he seemed to be writhing in silent laughter.

Wait, I thought to myself! He wants to wait until everything that once was dear to him is trampled under foot.

Make sure you keep crawling, George. Don't think you've been discovered. Lots of guys were discovered that way, because they were imagining they'd already been discovered and then did something foolish.

When I was still a living man in the life that I lived, I met a young fellow. His name was George. I latched on to him. We shared our pain and joy. He was much younger than I was. I valued everything about young George. In that young man I found again everything I prized in life. Now he has as little to do with me as a living man does with a dead one. May he think of me from time to time, if he has the time for it. I know that the living are very busy.

What consequences can there be for a dead man they throw from one grave into another? Not even a tombstone as tall as a house on his final resting place would be of any consequence to the dead man.

She had said, "Those people at the Gestapo, they know everything about a person." Mrs. Wallau had said, "That's all exaggeration. They only know what they've been told.

God had nothing to do with it, or only as much as He has something to do with everything. It was all just as I imagined it would be. A huge lot of hocus-pocus. For hours they put me to the acid test. Except I never imagined that they would sit there and write down all the rubbish I was spouting, and that after that I had to write my name under it, saying that I myself had really spouted all that.

And all the time they threatened me with everything they could possibly threaten me with. All that was lacking was hellfire. They really wanted to make me think they were the Last Judgment. But they are not the slightest bit all-knowing. All they know is what you tell them.

His eyebrows twitched in time to the march. His eyes glittered. Was his son among the marchers? This was a march that roiled up the people, made their spines tingle and their eyes glow. What magic was this, composed in equal parts of ancient memory and total forgetting? From the way they acted you might think that the last war these people had fought was the happiest of undertakings and had brought them only joy and prosperity

Mothers, justifiably fearful for every pfennig and always asking, What's it for? willingly gave up their sons and parts of their sons as long as they kept on playing this march. Once the music has faded away, they'd ask softly, What for? What for?

Wenn ein noch so winziger Streich gelang gegen die Allmacht des Feindes, dann war schon alles gelungen.

Noch hatte keine Schuld ihre Helligkeit getrübt, keine Ahnung, dass das Herz unter dem Druck des Lebens sich auf allerlei einlassen muss, was es dann später vorgibt, nicht begriffen zu haben- aber warum hat es dann so bang und hastig geschlagen?-, [...]

Anything that keeps one from feeling alone can be a consolation. Not only can what others are suffering be a consolation while we are suffering, but even knowing what others suffered long ago can be consoling.

Un po' di felicità quotidiana, subito, invece di quella terribile, spietata lotta per la felicità assoluta di chissà quale umanità della quale lui forse non avrebbe nemmeno fatto parte.

Once, back then, a young riverman had even publicly cursed the camp. He was immediately arrested and locked up in the camp for several weeks so that he saw firsthand what was going on inside there. When he got out, he looked strange and didn't answer a single question people asked him. He eventually found work on a barge, and later, his relatives said, he moved to Holland for good—a story that astounded the entire village back then.

And should you have any doubts or require any advice, do not turn to your wife or any other member of your family, or ask for any help from a spiritual source, but rather come to our headquarters and ask to be directed to room 18. Do you understand what I am saying, Mr. Mettenheimer?