Important Quotations Explained
It was only in the fairy tales that people were called upon to be so brave, to die for one another. Not in real-life Denmark.
[Annemarie] hesitated and glanced at her mother, fearful that she had said the wrong thing, the thing that would bring the pained look to her mother's face.
"What's happening?" Annemarie asked when she and Ellen were alone with Papa in the living room. "Something's wrong. What is it?" Papa's face was troubled. "I wish that I could protect you children from this knowledge," he said quietly.
For a moment, to Annemarie, listening, it seemed like all the earlier times, the happy visits to the farm in the past with summer daylight extending beyond bedtime, with the children tucked away in the bedrooms and the grownups downstairs talking.
"[I]t is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything. And so your mama does not know everything. Neither do I. We know only what we need to know."
