“Happiness is something that comes from our own hearts, not from other people.”
“You know what I wish? I wish I could put time in a bottle and throw it into the ocean. Then I would have forever to spend with you. I wouldn’t need air to breathe or food to eat. Holding you in my arms would be all the food I would need. Having your love would be the only air I would need to breathe.”
“Everyone had forgotten her. But that's the way Penny was-- so quiet and unimportant that you could look right at her and never see her. Esther had no idea why Penny always showed up at Grandma's house on Sunday afternoons when they came to visit. She was just one of those nosy neighbors with no life of her own, who watched other people's lives as if watching a movie.”
“One thing I have learned during these past few terrible years is that our grief and sorrow should be shared, not carried alone.”
“People are not puppets that Hashem controls, making us do whatever He wants. Nor can He be manipulated to do whatever we ask of Him. Human beings chose to start this war, and that means we are responsible for putting the people we love in danger, not Him. But Hashem can bring good from this, even if we cannot see it.”
“The prophet Habakkuk lived in a time that was much like ours. He, too, asked Hashem, ‘Why do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?’ And you know Hashem’s reply as well as I do: ‘The righteous shall live by his faith.”
“Just a minute, Esther. Slow down and listen to me. How can Hashem answer such a prayer in the middle of a war? We are the ones who started this war, not Him. People are not puppets that Hashem controls, making us do whatever He wants. Nor can He be manipulated to do whatever we ask of Him. Human beings chose to start this war, and that means we are responsible for putting the people we love in danger, not Him. But Hashem can bring good from this, even if we cannot see it.”
“But the Scriptures say that as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is Hashem’s mercy toward us. As far as the east is from the west, so far has Hashem removed our sins from us. We can be forgiven. And then we can begin to live new lives from that day forward.”
“Hashem may not answer our prayers the way we want him to," he said, clearing his throat. "He did not deliver Joseph from prison right away. But Hashem was there with Joseph, even in hype silence”
“baby-sitting their roast in his oven? Who knew what he would be doing for them next?”
“So here we are, lying side by side, hand in hand, listening to music on the middle of a basketball court with nothing but darkness surrounding us and I swear it, my world has never looked so bright. “Becca?”
“But a nation which has people who can think, the nation already has strength. It is the mind which rules, not instinct or habit.”
“step step step no no no plop plop plop in i go”
“So…we keep it a secret?”
“Not exactly. I’ve got to tell Lucy and Morgan. Just…not our parents, okay? Besides, think how fun it will be, sneaking around.”
His eyes light with mischief. “Good point.”
“Don’t go getting any naughty ideas,” I tease. “C’mon, walk me to my car.”
He takes my hand and falls into step beside me, glancing down at me with a wicked grin.
“What?” I ask.
“Hey, you’re the one who brought up ‘naughty,’ not me.”
I poke him playfully in the ribs.”
“The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered. Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, 'Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.'
A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
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