Assimilation Quote by Edmund de Waal

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Kövecses radiated the sense of self-sufficiency that comes about when there are lots of children in a big house.”

— Edmund de Waal

“The vitrines exist so that you can see objects, but not touch them: they frame things, suspend them, tantalise through distance.”

— Edmund de Waal

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