Brigid Pasulka · 368 pages
Rating: (1.6K votes)
“The stupid things you do in life are the most beautiful.”
“[The Pigeon had learned something about [women] from his eight sisters, and if over the years he had absorbed only this one thing, it would stand as vindication that a boy does not suffer needlessly from growing up in a house with eight sisters. That thing was that a woman's heart is not bought by the currency of a man's emotion for her. A woman's heart is won over by her own feelings for herself when he just happens to be around ...”
“If everyone knows so much about it, why do they need to make a documentary?”
“I press my back against the wall and feel the pressure of it against my whole body. I want to feel enclosed again, protected, safe as I was in the village. I wrap the blanket tightly around me, and I try to comfort myself by thinking about Tadeusz, but the loneliness that has opened up inside me is bigger than one person can fill.”
“It was just after the war. There was nothing left in Warsaw for me. He and his brother were coming to Krakow to make a fresh start. And he loved me so. He would have done anything for me.”
“I keep repeating the conversation with Taduesz in mind, reaching out to touch it to make sure it doesn't disappear.”
“Golden hands. It is said that all Poles have them, and that this is how you know your place in life, by the ease of your hands, that whether you are born to make cakes or butcher animals, cuddle children or paint pictures, drive nails or play jazz, your hands know it before you do. Long before birth, the movements are choreographed into the tendons as they're formed.”
“Over the weeks I am surprised to find that the more stories I record and the longer I carry them around, the lighter they become. I find out that the difference between knowing something and being able to talk about it is that there we many hands now, and we all share the burden”
“Normally I give permission to take my daughter for a walk after only the building of a wall and a stone pathway.' He smiled. 'For future reference.'
'But, Pan, I knew after the first week that a walk was not the only thing I would request,' the Pigeon said, smiling, 'and winter will be here soon.”
“That was before I found out that capitalists are just communists without the polyester.”
“When someone is telling you what to do all the time, anything you do of your own volition becomes a protest, doesn’t it?”
“But I thought you protested against the communists."
"Phooh. That was before I found our that capitalists are just communists without the polyester.”
“All I could do was suck in air through my gaping mouth and pray I wouldn’t pass out.”
“Saudi Arabia, and began having children, Osama bin Laden completed his high school education at the Al-Thager”
“After all, he meant well. Foreigners never seem to understand how little attraction an island of damp fogs, cut off from civilization, and a provincial little court has for us Parisians, who inhabit the most cultivated, powerful monarchy in the world.”
“You don't just choose a name at random. A name is a name. A major responsibility.”
“The nations of Israel and of the world are all broken, like pieces of shattered glass. It is time for all of us to come together and start anew, not with old ideas about buildings that need to be erected and divisions that need to be marked, but with the new idea of restoring ourselves into unity with God and with one another.”
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