“God warns us not to love any earthly thing above Himself, and yet He sets in a mother's heart such a fierce passion for her babes that I do not comprehend how He can test us so.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“I borrowed his brightness and used it to see my way, and then gradually, from the habit of looking at the world as he illuminated it, the light in my own mind rekindled.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“How little we know, I thought, of the people we live amongst.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go. This, I thought, must be the kindness that God does for them and for us, since He gives so many infants such a little while to bide with us.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“Despair is a cavern beneath our feet and we teeter on its very brink.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now. I can't say that I ever feel what it felt like then, when I was happy. But sometimes something will touch the place where that feeling was, a touch as slight and swift as the brush of a moth's wing in the dark.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“It was a voice full of light and dark. Light not only as it glimmers, but also as it glares. Dark not only as it brings cold and fear, but also as it gives rest and shade.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“It is a great thing to be young and to live without pain. And yet it is a blessing few of us count until we lose it.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“Why would I marry? I'm not made to be any man's chattel. I have my work, which I love. I have my home - it is not much,
I grant, yet sufficient for my shelter. But more than these, I have something very few women can claim: my freedom.
I will not lightly surrender it.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“It is natural to want to forget, Anna, when everyday is a brimful of sadness. But those souls also forgot those that they had loved. You do not want that, surely? I have heard some preach that God wants us to forget the dead, but I cannot believe so. I think He gives us precious recollections so that we may not be parted entirely from those He has given us to love. You must cherish your memories of your babes, Anna, until you see them again in Heaven.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“She was loved by a man as a woman is meant to be loved.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“She was quick of mind and swift of tongue, always ready to answer a set down with the kind of witty rebuke most of us can think of only long after the moment of insult has passed.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“When she had discovered that I hungered to learn, she commenced to shovel knowledge my way as vigorously as she spaded the cowpats into her beloved flower beds.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“I was not 15 anymore, and choices no longer had that same clear, bright edge to them.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“I was like one who forgets all day to eat until the scent from some other's roasting pan reminds her she's ravenous.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“If you are drowning in a sewer, your first concern might be that you are drowning, not how vile you smell.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“I open the door to my cottage these evenings on a silence so thick it falls upon me like a blanket. Of all the lonely moments of my day, this is the loneliest. I confess I have sometimes been reduced to muttering my thoughts aloud like a madwoman when the need for a human voice becomes too strong.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“I bent my head and breathed the fresh new scent of her. I looked into her deep blue eyes and saw reflected there the dawn of my own new life. This little girl seemed to me, at that moment, answer enough to all my questions. To have saved this small, singular one—this alone seemed reason enough that I lived. I knew then that this was how I was meant to go on: away from death and toward life, from birth to birth, from seed to blossom, living my life amongst wonders.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“How strange it is, Anna. Yesterday, I have filed in my mind as a good day, notwithstanding it was filled with mortal illness and the grieving of the recently bereft. Yet it is a good day, for the simple fact that no one died upon it. We are brought to a sorry state, that we measure what is good by such a shortened yardstick.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“I do not propose to go on as I have been, feeding on the gall of my own grief. For you grieve, and yet you live, and are useful, and bring life to others.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“One does not have to be a priest to be a man!”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“Time turned into a rope that unraveled as a languid spiral.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“Even the ordinary business of cleaning house seemed somehow to have become sacramental.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“I fear the line between myself and madness is as fine these days as a cobweb, and I have seen what it means when a soul crosses over into that dim and wretched place.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“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.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“And now I tell you this: do not dwell any more on things in the past that you cannot change. Who made man frail of the flesh? Who made our lusts, our low ways and our high? Did not God? Is not He the author of it all? The appetites we have all come from Him; they have been with us since Eden. If we slip and fall, He understands our weakness. Did not mighty King David lust, and was he not driven through his lust to do great wrong? And yet God loved David, and gave us, through him, the glory of the Psalms. So, too,”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“This is how an owl must look to a mouse in that last second before the talons sink into the flesh.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“Good yield does not come without suffering, it does not come without struggle, and toil, and yes, loss.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
“I cannot say that I have faith anymore. Hope, perhaps. We have agreed that it will do for now.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Year of Wonders
Geraldine Brooks
Born place: in Sydney, Australia
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“The "feminine" woman is forever static and childlike. She is like the ballerina in an old-fashioned music box, her unchanging features tiny and girlish, her voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin, rotating in a spiral that will never grow.”
― Susan Faludi, quote from Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
“Just what are women, exactly? Should men be classed in the same species as women? Why are they so different? Books and films may say it is better to be a woman, but I cannot believe it. I have never felt it to be true, and I never will.”
― Xinran, quote from The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
“And you're right, I do love you Eden. I will follow you into eternity, or until after this weekend when we all die gruesome, painful deaths... But with every breath I have left, I will use it to love you. Because, Eden, I want this... You; I want you more than life, more than anything. There was a time when I didn't think I was strong enough to face you again, or what is between us. I was too afraid of the heartache, of being shattered again. But now, it doesn't matter, nothing matters except you. I will take an eternity of hardship, of war or fighting my father, or anything, just to hold your love again. You are everything to me, my sun, my moon, the air I breathe. Nothing exists accept you. I love you.”
― Rachel Higginson, quote from Endless Magic
“The gate downstairs has a dead bolt,” said Frost. “There’s no way you could pick the lock.” “Then how could anyone …” She went dead silent. Turned toward the doorway. Footsteps were thumping up the stairs. In an instant her weapon was drawn and clutched in both hands. Pushing aside Mr. Kwan, she quickly slipped out of the bedroom. As she eased her way across the living room, she felt her heart banging, heard Frost’s footsteps creaking on her right. Smelled incense and mold and sweat, a dozen details assaulting her at once. But it was the stairwell door she focused on, a black portal to something that was now climbing toward them. Something that suddenly took on the shape of a man. “Freeze!” Frost commanded. “Boston PD!” “Whoa, Frost.” Johnny Tam gave a startled laugh. “It’s just me.” Behind her, Jane heard Mr. Kwan give a squawk of fear. “Who is he? Who is he?” “What the hell, Tam,” said Frost, huffing out a breath as he holstered his weapon. “I could have blown your head off.” “You did tell me to meet you here, didn’t you? I would’ve gotten here sooner, but I got stuck in traffic coming back from Springfield.” “You talk to the owner of that Honda?” “Yeah. Said it was stolen right out of his driveway. And that wasn’t his GPS in the car.” He swept his flashlight around the room. “So what’s going on in here?” “Mr. Kwan’s giving us a tour of the building.” “It’s been boarded up for years.”
― Tess Gerritsen, quote from The Silent Girl
“Humanity”—he grinned—“really does not change that much, you will learn. But stories, the ebb and flow of ideas, creativity, all of these things are always changing.”
― Elizabeth Hunter, quote from A Fall of Water
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A Need So BeautifulBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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