The very life of any creature is a quick-fading spark in fathomless darkness.

— Anthony Doerr

They can march for days without eating. They impregnate every schoolgirl they meet.

— Anthony Doerr

This, she realizes, is the basis of all fear. That a light you are powerless to stop will turn on you and usher a bullet to its mark.

— Anthony Doerr

Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

— Anthony Doerr

Up and down the lanes, the last unevaluated townspeople wake, groan, sigh. Spinsters, prostitutes, men over sixty. Procrastinators, collaborators, disbelievers, drunks. Nuns of every order. The poor. The stubborn. The blind.

— Anthony Doerr

War is a bazaar where lives are traded like any other commodity: chocolate or bullets or parachute silk.

— Anthony Doerr

What the war did to dreamers.

— Anthony Doerr

What the war did to the dreamers.

— Anthony Doerr

Whenever he can, Werner records what the partisans say on magnetic tape. Everybody, he is learning, likes to hear themselves talk. Hubris, like the oldest stories. They raise the antenna too high, broadcast for too many minutes, assume the world offers safety and rationality when of course it does not.

— Anthony Doerr

When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?

— Anthony Doerr