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War
Science, Good and Evil
Growing Up and Living
Quotes about War from All the Light We Cannot See
#1: “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?”
- Part 10
- Character: Marie-Laure
- Techniques: Contrast, rhetorical question
#2: “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.”
- Part 1
- Character: Jutta
- Techniques: Rhetorical question, dialogue
#3: ‘It’s not a person you wish to fight, Madame, it’s a system. How do you fight a system?’ ‘You try.'”
- Part 5
- Character: Etienne
- Techniques: Contrast, rhetorical question
#4: “Silence is the fruit of the occupation; it hangs in branches, seeps from gutters.”
- Part 7
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Personification, onomatopoeia
Analysis:
This quote refers to the atmosphere of a town under occupation during World War II. The silence is a result of the oppressive presence of the occupying forces, and it pervades every aspect of daily life.
The image of silence hanging in branches and seeping from gutters is a metaphorical description of how the silence has become tangible and inescapable. The use of the word “fruit” is significant because it implies that the silence is a direct result of the occupation, and it is something that the people are forced to endure as a consequence.
The quote highlights the impact of war and occupation on ordinary people, and how it can rob them of their voice and freedom.
#5: “Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon, and for the past week these men have tended to it the way worker bees might tend to a queen. They’ve fed her oils, repainted her barrel, lubricated her wheels; they’ve arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings.”
- Part Zero
- Character: Werner
- Techniques: Imagery (queen, workers, nationalism), metaphor
#6: “War, Etienne thinks distantly, is a bazaar where lives are traded like any other commodity: chocolate or bullets or parachute silk.”
- Part 9
- Character: Werner
- Techniques: Listing, metaphor
#7: “Every hour, she thinks, someone for whom the war was memory falls out of the world.”
- Part 13
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Hyperbole, contrast
Analysis:
This quote refers to the passage of time and the inevitability of death. The war that is being referred to is World War II, and as time passes, those who experienced it as a firsthand memory are growing older and passing away.
The phrase “falls out of the world” suggests that these people are leaving the world and that their memories of the war will soon be lost with them. The quote also conveys a sense of sadness and loss, as it highlights the fact that a generation of people who experienced such a significant historical event will eventually be gone, and with them, their memories and stories.
#8: “She crouches over her knees. She is the Whelk. Armored. Impervious.”
- Part 9
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Short sentence structure, narrative voice
#9: “The violins spiral down, then back up. Etienne takes Marie-Laure’s hand and together, beneath the low, sloping roof—the record spinning, the transmitter sending it over the ramparts, right through the bodies of the Germans and out to sea—they dance.”
- Part 7
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Contrast, imagery, compound sentences
#10: “I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me.”
- Part 3
- Character: Etienne
- Techniques: Extended metaphor/ motif of the radio, cyclical language
#11: “In the fall, at Zollverein, she received two letters announcing his death. Each mentioned a different place of burial.’
- Part 11
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Contrast, pathetic fallacy
All the Light We Cannot See Quotes about Science, Good and Evil
#12: “Walk the paths of logic. Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Every lock its key.”
- Part 3
- Character: LeBlanc
- Techniques: Metaphor, contrast, repetition
#13: “Every rumor carries a seed of truth.”
- Part 5
- Character: Madame Manac
- Technique: Paradox
#14: “Live faithfully, fight bravely, and die laughing.”
- Part 5
- Character: Singing boys
- Techniques: List, instructional
#15: “They’ll probably take the blind girls before they take the gimps.’The first boy moans grotesquely. Marie-Laure raises her book as if to shield herself”
- Part 1
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Dialogue, comparison
#16: “A light emerges, a light not kindled, Werner prays, by his own imagination: an amber beam wandering the dust”
- Part 2
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Metaphor, visual imagery, syntax (complex sentence structure)
Analysis:
This quote refers to a moment in the novel when Werner, a young German soldier during World War II, is hiding in a basement in Saint-Malo, France. As he waits in the darkness, he begins to see a faint light coming through the cracks in the ceiling.
The light is not from his own imagination or from any source he can identify, but seems to be a mysterious and almost otherworldly presence. Werner prays to the light, hoping for some kind of guidance or salvation. The quote suggests that even in the midst of the darkness and destruction of war, there is still the possibility of hope and redemption.
#17: “‘Is it right,’ Jutta says, ‘to do something only because everyone else is doing it?’ Doubts: slipping in like eels. Werner shoves them back.”
- Part 3
- Characters: Jutta/narrator
- Techniques: dialogue, syntax, personification
#18: “‘It’s only numbers, cadet, Hauptmann says, a favourite maxim. ‘Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.’”
- Part 3
- Character: Dr Hauptmann
- Techniques: Dialogue, metaphor of numbers as greater morality play
#19: “Jutta opens her eyes but doesn’t look at him. ‘Don’t tell lies. Lie to yourself, Werner, but don’t lie to me.’”
- Part 3
- Character: Jutta, narrator
- Techniques: dialogue, contradiction, repetition
#20: “A scientist’s work … is determined by two things. His interests and the interests of his time.”
- Part 3
- Character: Dr Hauptmann
- Techniques: Repetition
#21: “Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Every lock its key”
- Part 3
- Character: Werner
- Techniques: Syntax, metaphor to explain broader life
#22: “A real diamond is never perfect”
- Part 5
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Metaphor of the diamond for life or people
#23: “Volkheimer who always makes sure there is food for Werner. Who brings him eggs, who shares his broth, whose fondness for Werner remains, it seems, unshakable’
- Part 7
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Allusion to good verse evil in society, narrative voice
#24: “How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?”
- Part 7
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Rhetorical questioning
#25: “A line comes back to Marie-Laure from Jules Verne: Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
- Part 7
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Narrative voice, intertextuality
#26: “It’s a rock, Papa. A pebble. There is only luck, bad or good. Chance and physics. Remember? You are alive. I am only alive because I have not yet died.”
- Part 8
- Character: Maire-Laure
- Techniques: Extended metaphor of the pebble, oxymoron
Quotes about Growing Up and Living
#27: “We all grew up before we were grown up.”
- Part 12
- Character: Marie-Laure
- Technique: Paradox
#28: “The room feels flimsy, tenuous. Giant fingertips seem about to punch through its walls. ‘Papa?’ she whispers.”
- Part 0
- Character: Marie-Laure
- Techniques: Narrative recall, dialogue
#29: “Only a matter of time until the black vine chokes off his heart”
- Part 4
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia
#30: “When is it day and when night? Time seems better measured by flashes: Volkheimer’s field light flicks off, flicks on.”
- Part 4
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Rhetorical questioning, metaphor of light
#31: “A sentence Etienne once read aloud returns: Even the heart, which in higher animals, when agitated, pulsates with increased energy, in the snail under similar excitement, throbs with a slower motion.”
- Part 6
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Personification, syntax
#32: “Marie-Laure,’ he says without hesitation. He squeezes her hand with both of his. ‘You are the best thing that has ever come into my life.”
- Part 9
- Character: Etienne/narrator
- Techniques: Visual imagery, dialogue, syntax (pause in dialogue)
#33: “The keeper of the stone would live forever, but … misfortunes would fall on all those he loved.”
- Part 1
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Extended metaphor of the stone, fairytale language
This quote refers to a legend surrounding a precious diamond called the Sea of Flames. The legend says that whoever owns the diamond will live forever, but will suffer misfortunes and tragedies for their entire life and the lives of their loved ones.
The quote suggests that the idea of immortality is not worth the cost of constant suffering and loss. The characters in the novel encounter the diamond and its legend in different ways, and it serves as a metaphor for the cost of desires and the consequences of our actions.
#34: “Marie-Laure curls into a ball beneath her bed with the stone in her left fist and the little house in her right.”
- Part 1
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Extended metaphor of the stone, narrative voice
#35: “Werner who stood by as the consequences came raining down. Werner who watched Volkheimer wade into house after house, the same ravening nightmare recurring over and over and over.”
- Part 9
- Character: Narrator
- Pathetic fallacy, repetition
#36: “He does not look away until she is through the intersection, down the next block, and out of sight”
- Part 9
- Character: Narrator, about Werner
- Techniques: Imagery, geographical language
#37: “He says he will never leave her, not in a million years.”
- Part 1
- Character: Daniel to Marie-Laure
- Techniques: hyperbole
#38: “Why else do any of this if not to become who we want to be?”
- Part 5
- Character: Werner
- Technique: Rhetorical question
#39: “So, asked the children, how do you know it’s really there?”
“You have to believe the story.”
- Part 9
- Character: Narrator
- Technique: Embedded narrative (story within a story)
#40: “They’ll say you’re too little, Werner, that you’re from nowhere, that you shouldn’t dream big. But I believe in you. I think you’ll do something great.”
- Part 1
- Character: Frau Elena
- Techniques: Contrast, prediction
#41: “All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?”
- Part 10
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Rhetorical question, contrast, lineal time
#42: “See obstacles as opportunities, Reinhold. See obstacles as inspirations.”
- Part 3
- Character: Von Rumpel
- Techniques: Repetition, juxtaposition, symmetry
#43: “To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air.”
- Part 8
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Extended metaphor (blindness)
#44: “‘Your problem, Werner,’ says Frederick, ‘is that you still believe you own your life.’”
- Part 5
- Character: Frederick
- Techniques: Dialogue, paradox
Analysis:
The quote refers to Werner’s struggle to take control of his own life, rather than being constrained by the circumstances of his upbringing and the expectations of those around him.
Frederick is suggesting that Werner’s worldview is limited by his belief that he has complete control over his own life. In reality, Frederick argues, Werner’s life is shaped by many factors outside of his control, such as his social class, his family background, and the political climate of his time.
By acknowledging and grappling with these limitations, Frederick suggests, Werner might be able to find a way to live a more meaningful and fulfilling life.
#45: “Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
- Part 5
- Character: Madame Manec
- Techniques: Dialogue, rhetorical questioning, oxymoron
#46: “We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”
- Part 10
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Syntax (short sentences used for effect), visceral imagery
#47: “What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.”
- Part 1
- Character: Dr Hauptmann
- Techniques: Extended metaphor (light being like our lives)
#48: “‘Open your eyes’ concludes the man, ‘and see what you can with them before they close forever.’”
- Part 9
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Contrast, finality, extended metaphor of light
#49: “Daughters, how much they would love to see a city on a table. His youngest would want him to kneel beside her”
- Part 6
- Character: Narrator
- Techniques: Imagery, prediction
Analysis:
This quote is from a passage in “All the Light We Cannot See” in which the father is reminiscing about his daughters and their childhood. The passage describes how his youngest daughter would ask him to play with her, pretending that the objects on the table were a city. The father imagines kneeling beside her and participating in her game.
The quote “Daughters, how much they would love to see a city on a table” highlights the innocence and imagination of childhood, as well as the love and connection between a father and his daughters. It also suggests a sense of nostalgia and longing for the simplicity and happiness of the past.
#50: ‘Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.’
- Part 3
- Character: Dr Hauptmann
- Techniques: Syntax, dialogue
On the hunt for quotes from other texts?
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Lucinda Garbutt-Young hopes to one day be writing for a big-shot newspaper… or maybe just for a friendly magazine in the arts sector. Right now, she is enjoying studying a Bachelor of Public Communication (Public Relations and Journalism) at UTS while she writes on the side. She also loves making coffees for people in her job as a barista, and loves nothing more than a sun shower.
