Jan-Philipp Sendker

“Yet she also longed for moments when she might be weak, when she need not prove anything to anyone.”

“Who are you? What’s your name?”“Mi Mi.”“Do you hear that thumping noise?”“No.”“It must be here somewhere.” Tin Win knelt down. Now it was nearly next to his ear. “I hear it more and more distinctly. A soft pulsing. You really don’t hear it?”“No.”“Close your eyes.”Mi Mi closed her eyes. “Nothing,” she said, and laughed. Tin Win leaned over and felt her breath on his face. “I think it’s coming from you.” He crept closer to her and held his head just in front of her chest.There it was. Her heartbeat.”

“Eyes and ears are not the problem... It is rage that blinds and deafens us. Or fear. Envy, mistrust. The world contracts, gets all out of joint when you are angry or afraid.”

“Only a few days earlier he had explained to her that he did not merely read books but traveled with them, that they took him to other countries and unfamiliar continents, and that with their help he was always getting to know new people, many of whom even became his friends.”

“She hoped that Tin Win would learn what she had learned over the years: that there are wounds time does not heal, though it can reduce them to a manageable size.”

“She saw that he knew what loneliness was, that he understood why it might be raining inside a person even when the sun shone, that sadness needed no immediate cause.”

“We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes as uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize.”

“How can anyone truthfully claim to love someone when they’re not prepared to share everything with that person, including their past?”