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6058c56
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My mother was an excellent woman. Pious, virtuous. Kind. But she was not the intellectual equal of my father. Not by any means. I do not speak of book learning. I speak of a certain innate quality of mind, a superior understanding. Because she had it not, their companionship was - diminished. Father looked to his books, rather than to his wife.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a874c3c
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When she thought of the letter beit, it was not of the thickness of lines or the exactitude of spaces. It was of mysteries: the number two, the dual; the house, the house of God on earth. 'They will build me a temple and I will dwell in them.' In them, not in it. He would dwell within her. She would be the house of God. The house of transcendence. Just a single, tiny letter, and in it, such a path to joy.
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words
transcendence
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3f52563
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Of course, you don't have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3720408
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To believe, to act, and to have events confound you--I grant you, that is hard to bear. But to believe, and not to act, or to act in a way that every fiber of your soul held was wrong--how can you not see? That is what would have been reprehensible.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8b11c29
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He did not turn. Embracing his sister, he stepped off the bank, onto the ice. He walked out into the centre, where the ice was thin. His sister's head lay on his shoulder. They stood there for a moment, as the ice groaned and cracked. Then it gave way.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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1c27dc9
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Josip had only an instant to exchange a glance with Serif. He made it the most eloquent glance of his life.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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bc4cd6e
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In any case, the manifesto states that a Jew is without honour from the day of his birth. That he cannot differentiate between what is dirty and what is clean. That he is ethically subhuman and dishonourable. It is therefore impossible to insult a Jew and from this it follows that a Jew cannot demand satisfaction for any insult.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7d156f8
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The author of this text did not write to provoke, but merely to express a truth as he conceives it. Your own theologians have tied logic in knots to advance a doctrine addressing this very same point. What is the Virgin Birth, after all, but the fumbling of minds striving to deal with the indelicate realities of the body? We Jews are merely more forthright about such matters.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8072b66
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It did not even occur to David to consult Ruti herself about this, or any other matter. Had he done so, he would have been most surprised by the result. He did not realize it, but his love for his daughter marched hand in hand with a kind of contempt for her. He saw his daughter as a kind-hearteed, dutiful, but vaguely pitiable soul. David, like many people, had made the mistake of confusing "meek" with "weak."
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Geraldine Brooks |
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d74202c
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Good yield does not come without suffering, it does not come without struggle, and toil, and yes, loss.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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15dd17e
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You know that your church has always taken a view on these matters very different from ours, from the day that the first printing press was assembled. Your church did not want your holy scriptures in the hands of ordinary people. We felt differently. To us, printing was an avokat ha kodesh, a holy work. Some rabbis even likened the press to an altar. We call it 'writing with many pens' and saw it as furthering the spread of the word that be..
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christianity
judaism
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7bb21d9
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The Wampanoag, in ways which are not plain to me, in concert decided upon their own observance of father's passing. They marked it in a most singular manner. As soon as father's loss became known to them, each one, when traveling up or down the island, would fetch from the shore a smooth white stone such as can oft be found there. These they carried until they passed the place where father had taken farewell of them. There they deposited th..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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4f10f18
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And yet [Tequamuck] refuses to see that God prospers you, and protects you, and keeps from you the sicknesses against which his powers are as nothing. So, this do I see: We must find favor with your God, or die. That, Storm Eyes, is why I came to your father." His expression was grim. I wanted to reach for his hand, offer some comfort. But I did not. I just sat there, wordless, until he spoke again. "Life is better than death. I know this. ..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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15a619e
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Some would say it was a pact with the devil, and therefore I am not bound by it. But after that day I was no longer certain that Tequamuck was Satan's servant. To be sure, father and every other minister in my lifetime has warned that Satan is guileful and adept at concealing his true purpose. But since that day I have come to believe that it is not for us to know the subtle mind of God. It may be, as Caleb thought, that Satan is God's ange..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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6baec86
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How should I worship your God, no matter how powerful, when I know what he will allow to befall us? Who would follow such a cruel god? And how should I lay aside the spirits by whose aid I have roiled the sea and riven rock, who for long years gifted me the power to cure the sick and to inflame my enemies' blood? To begloom the bright day and set dim night ablaze? All this, my spirits have allowed to me. Your God may be stronger than these;..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a41c4b3
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The haggadah] was made to teach, and it will continue to teach. And it might teach a lot more than just the Exodus story.
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religion
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Geraldine Brooks |
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5bd06f9
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Time turned into a rope that unraveled as a languid spiral.
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time
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7692778
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Even the ordinary business of cleaning house seemed somehow to have become sacramental.
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worship
work
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Geraldine Brooks |
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535849d
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I was struck, as always, that a heathen poet from long ago should know so much of the human heart, and how little that heart changes, though great cities fall and new dispensations sweep away the old and pagan creeds.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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e0e27fc
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You English palisade yourselves up behind 'must nots' and I commence to think it is a barren fortress in which you wall yourselves. - Caleb
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8a5f661
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Only one god. Strange, that you English, who gather about you so many things, are content with one only. And so distant, up there in the sky. I do not have to look so far. I can see my skygod clear enough, right there,' he said, stretching out an arm towards the sun. 'By day Keesakand. Tonight Nanpawshat, moon god, will take his place. And there will be Potanit, god of the fire....' He prattled on, cataloguing his pantheon of heathenish ido..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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0c03072
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A woman had thrown her own babe down a well. When she was brought to answer for the murder, she said that one great good had come of her evil act. At last, she said, she was free of the uncertainty that had plagued her every waking thought: was she numbered among the damned or the saved? Her whole life had been bent about that question. Finally, she knew.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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53112d2
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Much later, when I could think about it clearly, I consoled myself that there were many worse ways in which I might have been raped.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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cbf1170
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Other ayatollahs considered the female voice arousing and barred women from speaking in mixed gatherings unless they first put a stone in their mouths to distort the sound. Khomeini,
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a77f41e
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So, you are happy to be a pigeon?" "Maybe so. But at least a pigeon does no harm. The hawk lives at the expense of the other creatures that dwell in the desert."
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Geraldine Brooks |
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625fced
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Women, on the other hand, were easy targets. Any time things started to go wrong in the Middle East, women suffered for it first. A fundamentalist revolution couldn't instantly fix a national economy, but it could order women into the veil. If
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Geraldine Brooks |
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6e89f8a
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Australians say 'pissed off.' Pissed means drunk. Piss is alcohol. To take the piss--that means to send someone up, make fun of them.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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1e1b398
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It is the habit of our species to despoil all we touch. Yet few see it so.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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e771bee
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It's too late," she said, her voice trembling. "You are not the beautiful innocent vagabond walking toward me under the dogwood blossoms, with his trunks and his head full of worthless notions. And I am not the beloved, cherished ladies' maid..."
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Geraldine Brooks |
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fb5eb76
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But some things on earth were possible, and some were not, and Ruti knew the difference.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3d56616
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There, where one burns books, one in the end burns men. --Heinrich Heine
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Geraldine Brooks |
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125a9fa
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From "Caleb's Crossing"--This is an excellent thought about family though it doesn't apply to me. I am lucky in my brothers. "Now, of all times in my life, did I wish Caleb truly was my brother, rather than that selfish, imperious, weak-willed soul to whom fate had shackled me."
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family
eileen-granfors
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Geraldine Brooks |
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97d1995
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This is how an owl must look to a mouse in that last second before the talons sink into the flesh.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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f90e118
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It has to do with an intuition about the past. By linking research and imagination, sometimes I can think myself into the heads of the people who made the book. I can figure out who they were, or how they worked.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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fb315d6
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I do not ask for your abosolution. I simply ask you to see that there is only one thing to do when we fall, and that is get up, and go on with the life that is set in front of us, and try to so the good of which our hands are capable for the people who come in our way. That, at least, has been my path
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Geraldine Brooks |
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d3cccfc
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And yet what manner of man would I be, who has so much to say in the contest of words, if now I shirked this contest of blood?
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b6dc458
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His spirit is like a guttering candle
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Geraldine Brooks |
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701f6e4
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I cannot say that I have faith anymore. Hope, perhaps. We have agreed that it will do for now.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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0235d73
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I had little wish to recall the callow peddler who would turn over any dank stone in his quest for knowledge.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b934b77
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The island. As I tally my losses, it figures large there. If God takes a beloved one unto himself, we feel that loss in our heart. Yet we know well enough that nowt will quicken the dead, and so we must strive to be reconciled. But the island--its briny air, its ever changing light--these things yet exist. There, the clean and glassy breakers still beat upon the sands, the clay cliffs still flare russet and purple each sunset. All of this g..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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53a9304
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The island cried out to me. I longed to feast my senses on its light and air, and restore my spirit with its peace. If I answered its call, soon enough I would live again in the familiar rhythms of its seasons--the wincing winters and dappled summers, its shy, reluctant springtide and gleaming, bronzed leaf fall.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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c4ef88e
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For a girl raised on the rim of a wilderness, it was strange to be in a place where every inch of ground had been settled for hundreds upon hundreds of years. I felt the press of people, and the press of ghosts--great hordes of those who had lived and walked before me.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b92392b
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All this is true and certain. But what I do not know is this: which home welcomed him, at the end. Whichever it was--the celestial English heaven of seraphim, cherubim and ophanim, or Kietan's warm and fertile place away in the southwest, I believe that his song was powerful enough for Joel to hear and to follow him there.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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6241450
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Anys was so skilled with plants and balms that she knew how to extract their fragrant oils, and these she wore on her person so that a light, pleasant scent, like summer fruits and flowers, always preceded her.
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year-of-wonders
herbalist
naturalism
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Geraldine Brooks |