Quotes from Naomi Alderman

And do you do the same now, with other children? With the children in your care?" But Mrs. Montgomery-Taylor, now Mrs. Williams, has always been shrewd, even in her madness. "All children need different kinds of love," she says. "We do what's needed to care for them." Children are born so small. It does not matter if they are boys or girls. They are all born so weak and so powerless.

What can I tell you? Welcome to the human race. You people like to pretend things are simple, even at your own cost.

You have been taught that you are unclean, that you are not holy, that your body is impure and could never harbor the divine. You have been taught to despise everything you are and to long only to be a man. But you have been taught lies.

The candidates hit the floor like Travolta, ready with their moves, knowing that the spotlight is going to find them and illuminate every glistening thing: both sequins and sweat.

But it's more complicated than you think, how you feel about a person. Sometimes I think that if she'd asked me, even once, to stay, I would have stayed forever. The Rabbis teach that we each hold worlds within us. Maybe both these things are true. But she never asked. And so I had to leave.

We are not ruled by blind instinct like the beasts. Uniquely, we can listen to the commands of God, can understand them, yet can choose disobedience. It is this, and only this, which gives our obedience its value.

It's the younger generation who'll have to live in the world you're building,

A child in danger must learn to pay more attention to the adults than a child loved and cherished.

Not even a stone is the same as another stone

doesn't matter that she shouldn't, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.

who can say why these things happen on Thursday, when the same events might have gone unremarked on Tuesday?—they fought back. A dozen women turned into a hundred. A hundred into a thousand. The police retreated. The women shouted; some made placards. They understood their strength, all at once.

Roxy doesn't run from fights at school. . . . You've got to stomp them till they beg. You don't run.

Behind his back, he knows the women in the factory are observing the encounter with cold, dark eyes. There'll be no doubting him after this, there'll be no asking what he is; they'll know what he is when they see what he can do. He's not a man in women's clothing. He's one of them, as strong as them, as capable.

It is hard now, very hard, but the difficulty is familiar. Her body wants something, and she is denying it.

We have no wish to interfere in the affairs of a sovereign nation," says Margot. "Cultural differences must be respected. I know the President will trust my judgment on this.

These things are happening all at once. These things are one thing. They are the inevitable result of all that went before. The power seeks its outlet. These things have happened before; they will happen again. These things are always happening.

Every day one grows a little, every day something is different, so that in the heaping up of days suddenly a thing that was impossible has become possible. This is how a girl becomes a grown woman. Step by step until it is done.

How quickly people forget the taste of freedom, swapping it for this easy comfortable thing they call peace. Sleep is peaceful. Death is peaceful. Freedom is life and wakefulness.

You do remember," continues Semple, "that they turned overnight when the Shah fell and the Ayatollah came to power? You do remember that it happens that quickly?

It's been a year. There's been footage on the TV of riots in faraway and unstable parts of the world, of women taking whole cities. Daniel's right. The critical thing isn't that fifteen-year-old girls can do it: you could contain that. The thing is that they can wake up this power in some of the older women. It raises questions. How long has this been possible? How did no one know until now?

It is a gift. Who is it to say it does not come from God.

There are more kinds of belonging than you know, Ronit, my joy. The world is not so easily categorized as you might prefer. And you are trying to steal that which you do not even desire.

I'd forgotten it was these people I was coming back to: these views, that synagogue full of small, cramped minds, grown twisted through lack of sunlight.

This is the trouble with history. You can't see what's not there.