Torvalds to his mother, about his sister
2000s, (2001)
“If I'm engrossed in a book, I have to rearrange my thoughts before I can mingle with other people, because otherwise they might think I was strange.”
8 November 1943
Variant: If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Original
Als ik een boek lees, dat indruk op me maakt, moet ik in mezelf grondig orde scheppen, alvorens me onder de mensen te begeven, anders zou men van mij denken dat ik een wat rare geest had.
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Anne Frank 110
victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary 1929–1945Related quotes
“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
On surviving a plane crash in 1951
Zmijewsky, Boris; Lee Pfeiffer (1982). The Films of Clint Eastwood. p. 16. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press. .
“I am so tired of rearranging my life around what the stupidest people might do.”
The Golden Goose Special (1997)
On letting his work speak regarding race and class in “James McBride Says Fiction Writing Allows Him More Freedom” https://www.npr.org/2017/10/01/554933082/james-mcbride-says-fiction-writing-allows-him-more-freedom in NPR (2017 Oct 1)
On life in hiding from Nazi authorities, p. 48
To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (2000)
Context: One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't see people, or go for a walk in the forest. All I had was my head and my books, and I thought a lot. I learned, because there was no interruption. I had access to myself, to my thinking. I wouldn't say that I particularly matured. The thinking was physics thinking. I was just short of twenty-two then.
I was in hiding for two years and two months, something like that. In all that time I went out very, very little, just once in a great while, after dark. Once I even took the train to Utrecht, forty miles from Amsterdam, with my yellow star, this star which I still have. Why did I go? I just wanted to visit some friends. I was a little bit crazy, a little bit insane.
“It's a good thing I'm a reasonably patient woman. Otherwise, I might have to kill you.”
Source: Wicked Pleasure