Quotes from Geraldine Brooks

He was not afraid of silence, which most of us will rush to fill. And this, too: our holiest men have always gone into the wilderness to hear the voice of the Name. Avram

What did they want from him, these people? The girl's face was scrunched up like she had some kind of ague. Anyone think she was the one been sold away from her home and kin.

There was something in her that could not, or would not, see the distinctions that the world wished to make between weak and strong, between women and men, laborer and lord.

So it is, out here on this island, where we dwell with our faces to the sea and our backs to the wilderness. Like Adam's family after the fall, we all have things to do.

These artists you propose to study, these"—she paused and dropped her voice—"White males. They are not so intéressant, I think. Not so important.

What really is at stake? The subjects are Black, the painters White, yet you want to argue against objectification in this case?

Why must you illuminate these cases, where enslaved people are not depicted in a dehumanized and stereotypical way? It's rare and exceptional." "Well, professor. You have answered for me. Because it is rare and exceptional.

The wishes and desires of the powerful can be fickle things. I knew this. But I knew it in that deep place where one hides knowledge that is inconvenient, or too painful to admit, even to oneself.

You have to know that bigots are unwittingly handing you an edge. By thinking you're lesser than they are, they underestimate you. Lean on that. Learn to use it, and you'll get the upper hand.

Mullahs have been making an issue of field hockey lately, because you have to run and bend. And

The stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip.

The angels enter not into a house where there is a dog or a likeness'—are those not the words of our Prophet?

silver-ferruled walking stick tapping

A canoe paddle is animate, because it causes something else to move. Even a humble onion has, in their view, a soul, since it causes action—pulling tears from the eyes.

I understood that where Michael Mompellion had been broken by our shared ordeal, in equal measure I had been tempered and made strong.

No one sits, as you do, so close to a king, who does not begin to grasp how the levers of power work, and the cost of the oil that must grease them.

These nineteenth-century horses were stronger and healthier, capable of massive endurance as well as thrilling speed. They ran four miles, you know—heats—up to three times in a single day. They were tough.

The ones he bred there in the desert, their bodies changed—or changed back, I should say. Their chests expanded from the effort of running in the sand, their eyelashes thickened to keep the fine particles out.

Where was his empathy? Buried, I supposed, beneath his self-regard.

some half-dozen children running in the fields or about the wetus—fewer

Wealthy women who wanted to keep fit maintained well-equipped gyms in their homes and hired personal trainers. The rest led completely sedentary lives.

This night he was a king before he was a man. At this time, this troubled me. Later, I would have cause to wish it were always so.

There's always sentiment against free nig—against his kind.

If all who have the means run each time this disease appears, then the seeds of the Plague will go with them and be sown far and wide throughout the land until the clean places are infected and the contagion is magnified a thousandfold. If God saw fit to send this scourge, I believe it would be His will that one face it where one was, with courage, and thus contain its evil.