Anne Frank
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie Frankwas a German-born diarist and writer. She is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, which documents her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, is one of the world's most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth12 June 1929
CityFrankfurt, Germany
CountryGermany
If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly in hand before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
Ordinary people don't know how much books can mean to someone who's cooped up.
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.
Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.
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.
I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains
Mrs. Van Daan's grizzling is absolutely unbearable; now she can't any longer drive us crazy over the invasion, she nags us the whole day long about the bad weather. It really would be nice to dump her in a bucket of cold water and put her up in the loft.
Who would ever think that so much can go on in the soul of a young girl?
I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are still truly good at heart,
I do my best to please everybody, far more than they'd ever guess. I try to laugh it all off, because I don't want to let them see my trouble.
Outside, you don't hear a single bird, and a deathly, oppressive silence hangs over the house and clings to me as if it were going to drag me into the deepest regions of the underworld.... I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage.
Sometimes I think God is trying to test me, both now and in the future. I'll have to become a good person on my own, without anyone to serve as a model or advise me, but it'll make me stronger in the end.
Sometimes I'm so deeply buried under self-reproaches that I long for a word of comfort to help me dig myself out again.
I love you, with a love so great that it simply couldn't keep growing inside my heart, but had to leap out and reveal itself in all its magnitude.