Viewing: Rose Valland - View all posts

Book Quotes - The Monuments Men 

Sub-heading: Books I've read. 

This installment of "Book Quotes" is brought to you by "The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History"  by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter

Ever since reading that George Patton book, I suddenly find myself with somewhat of an interest in WW2 history. The basic gist of this book: soldiers on a mission to save the great works of art stolen by the Nazis.

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"It is amazing how the world can change, he thought, during the life span of a fruitcake."

"I believe that all this loveliness showing through the rubble and wreck are just foreshadowings of the joys we were made for.”

Baseball:

"During the Bulge, Posey told him, the Germans had parachuted troops behind Allied lines dressed in American uniforms. The only way to find them out was to ask questions on strictly American topics, like baseball. The Germans were always clueless."

New York City:

"To see a painting of this quality leaning against the wall of a command post amid the bullets and the grime was to understand that great works of art were part of the world. They were objects. They were fragile. They were lonely, small, unprotected. A child on a playground looks strong, but a child wandering alone down Madison Avenue in New York City—that’s terrifying."

It was so cool reading this book and THEN taking a trip to Paris, staying in the Latin Quarter! :

"First Lieutenant James Rorimer rode his bicycle to Rose Valland’s apartment in the fifth arrondissement, an ancient section of Paris known as the Latin Quarter. The quarter had been popular with tourists before the war, but few tourists, Rorimer suspected, had ever visited Valland’s middle-class residential area, a lonely and secluded stretch just beyond the site of a massive fire started by German bombardment in August 1944."

 

"Sometimes, Rose Valland thought as the snows of December 1944 floated down around her, your destiny is thrust upon you." (Photo on left - Translation: "Hero of the Arts")

 

"Destiny is not one push, she thought as she waited to cross a quiet street on that cold Paris evening years later, but a thousand small moments that through insight and hard work you line up in the right direction, like a magnet does with metal shavings."