“The house wasn't theirs anymore. It was full of people, some in uniforms and some in suits. People counting rooms, making lists of objects and pictures, taking things away. Anna is in there somewhere. She has been ordered to help… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share Image
“This is the strange undoing of a collection, of a house and of a family. It is the moment of fissure when grand things are taken and when family objects, known and handled and loved, become stuff.” — Edmund de Waal Copy Share Image
“I do not know where Viktor and Rudolf were taken. I cannot find the records. I never Elisabeth or Iggie. It is possible that… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“And I'm not entitled to nostalgia about all that lost wealth and glamour from a century ago. And I am not interested in thin.… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“And someone turns out the lights in the library, as if being in the dark will make them invisible, but the noise reaches into… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“Does assimilation mean that they never came up against naked prejudice? Does it mean that you understood where the limits of your social world… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“The house wasn't theirs anymore. It was full of people, some in uniforms and some in suits. People counting rooms, making lists of objects… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“It makes me wonder what belonging to a place means. Charles died a Russian in Paris. Viktor called it wrong and was a Russian… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“There is something about that burning of all those letters that gives me pause: why should everything be made clear and be brought into… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“He stands with his hands in his pockets, well-dressed and self-assured, with his life before him and a plush armchair behind him.” — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“You just hope, if you make things as I do, that they can make their way in the world and have some longevity.” — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“Stories and objects share something, a patina...Perhaps patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential is revealed...But it also seems additive,… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“Kövecses radiated the sense of self-sufficiency that comes about when there are lots of children in a big house.” — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“The vitrines exist so that you can see objects, but not touch them: they frame things, suspend them, tantalise through distance.” — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
The problem is that I am in the wrong century to burn things. I am the wrong generation to let it go. — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“How objects are handed on is all about story-telling. I am giving you this because I love you. Or because it was given to… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
“Japanese things - laquers, netsuke, prints - conjure a picture of a place where sensations are always new, where art pours out of daily… — Edmund de Waal Copy Share
