16 Quotes by Milena Michiko Flašar

How come you're so different, I asked once, as we sat in the shade of the pine tree. Yukiko's answer, a sentence learned by heart: Because I fell from a star.

There is only one age for anyone. I was and am, will always be fifty-eight. But you. Be careful what age you end up. It sticks to you. It seals you shut. The age you choose is like glue, it sets around you.

After he finished he said: If there is anything for you to learn, it's only that you should not be ashamed. Don't be ashamed to be a person with feelings. No matter what it is, feel it tenderly and deeply. Feel it more tenderly, feel it more deeply. Feel it for yourself. Feel it for others. And then: Let it go.

Illness, I think, is holding unto an illusion. The loneliness while you're holding onto it.

Can you hear me? Sighing. You were right. My requiem is well prepared. Still to be written is the poem that is never complete, an endless rubbing on the ink block, an endless dipping of the pen, an endless swoop over the white paper, the poem of my life. I will try to write it down. Soon, no, now, I will try. The first line. I called him Necktie. I will write: He taught me to see with eyes of feeling.

He pointed to the right and left. We are unfree, all of us. Only, that does not absolve us of responsibility. Despite our lack of freedom we constantly make decisions and we have to take responsibility for them and their consequences. And so, with every decision we take we become less free.

Einfachheit. Einfach da sein. Es einfach aushalten. Je mehr ich es aushielt, desto einfacher wurde es einzusehen, wie schön, einfach schön, es ist, da zu sein.

Er funktionierte. Wenn ich ihn ansah, sah ich eine Zukunft, in der ich langsam, zu langsam ums Leben kommen würde. Nichts funktioniert, hatte ich zurückgegeben. Und dann: Ich kann nicht mehr.

Today on the platform, surrounded by so many people, I asked myself whether I would miss any one of them if they weren't here, and then: Whether they would miss me if I weren't here. Whether we are not all somehow here in order to touch one another. When the train finally came and I saw my reflection in its windows and in the sleeping faces rolling by behind them, there was no question, only an insight: We must all, every one of us, relate to one another.