Quotes from Carol Matas

We are alive. We are human, with good and bad in us. That's all we know for sure. We can't create a new species or a new world. That's been done. Now we have to live within those boundaries . What are our choices? We can despair and curse, and change nothing. We can choose evil like our enemies have done and create a world based on hate. Or we can try to make things better.

I want someone to pinch me so I can feel something, anything. I'm sick of this numbness, of feeling so alone and outside of everything, but I know it's too dangerous to wake up." —Ruth Mendenberg

As for sex. Well, of course I could've had sex. Guys will have sex with a watermelon if they're desperate enough. Lots of girls try to prove their love by having sex. It only proves they're having sex.

B)ut who can start over when memories never leave you? —Ruth Mendenberg

Deep inside me something says don't feel anything, go back to sleep, when you feel, it hurts. When you love, people die." —Ruth Mendenberg

I am wandering inside, wandering through my past, trying to see if there is a place there strong enough to hold me. —Ruth Mendenberg

Haven't we all been hurt? Don't you think it takes courage to be happy, to feel, to love? Don't you think it costs us all? —Rivka

S)omehow I've survived again. I don't know how to stop. —Ruth

I go in alone, for there is no one for me, but I don't care, I tell myself; I'd expected no one. —Ruth

Will you be all right?" she asked How could I be? Would you be all right, I felt like screaming, if you'd just watched your family taken away, watched your entire town taken away, to be murdered . I'll never be alright.

You're a coward," she says, "afraid to feel anything in case you get hurt. Well, look around. Haven't we all been hurt? Don't you think it takes courage to be happy, to feel, to love? Don't you think it costs us all? I stare at her. "Fine, I'm a coward. I'd rather be a coward than have to feel anything ever again.

You've lived through all this, Ruth. Do you know how strong that makes you? Ruth, it takes more work to be afraid than to ride the fear, to live with the fear, to accept it.

We only have now. nobody really has more than that. The difference is, we know it.

I agree that we can't be weak. We can fight when attacked, of course, but should we become the attackers?

Ruth. If I die tomorrow, I'll be dead. But while I'm here, I want to be alive. One or the other. Not the state you're in.

That's what I believe, God exists. God is there. But God doesn't decide what happens here on earth; we do. God gave us free will and we have to use it." ~Zvi

You don't think we can love each other?" She challenges me. "Sure, of course you can. But he could be dead tomorrow," I warn. "Or you could." "And is that a reason not to love someone?" She asks "Yes." I reply "Yes, it is.

I know one thing -- I don't understand it. Will Adam's survival, or Morris's, depend on something little like that? Like a toss of a coin? It makes me feel like everything must be terribly important, even the toss of a coin, or nothing is important, and we may as well not care about anything.

If I forget the bad, I have to forget the good, too. The memories are all I have now of my family. And I don't want to lose them.

I am wandering inside, wandering through my past, trying to see if there is a place there strong enough to hold me.

We are alive, but what is left of us?

And then, right in front of Lufa, they kissed again.