Quotes from Geraldine Brooks

It galls me, when I catch a stray remark from the master, or between the older English pupils, to the effect that the Indians are uncommonly fortunate to be here.

So, you are happy to be a pigeon?" "Maybe so. But at least a pigeon does no harm. The hawk lives at the expense of the other creatures that dwell in the desert.

Until Islam's articulate spokeswomen such as Rana Kabbani target their misguided coreligionists with the fervor they expend on outside critics, the grave mistake of conflating Islam with clitoridectomy and honor killings will continue. And much more importantly, so will the practices themselves, at the cost of so many Muslim women's health and happiness.

Australians say 'pissed off.' Pissed means drunk. Piss is alcohol. To take the piss--that means to send someone up, make fun of them.

I had come in stages to a different belief about how one should be in this life. I now felt convinced that the greater part of a man's duty consists in abstaining from much that he is in the habit of consuming.

Much later, when I could think about it clearly, I consoled myself that there were many worse ways in which I might have been raped.

It has to do with an intuition about the past. By linking research and imagination, sometimes I can think myself into the heads of the people who made the book. I can figure out who they were, or how they worked.

In Muslim societies men's bodies just weren't seen as posing the same kind of threat to social stability as women's. Getting

Why, I wondered, did we, all of us, both the rector in his pulpit and simple Lottie in her croft, seek to put the Plague in unseen hands? Why should this thing be either a test of faith sent by God, or the evil working of the Devil in the world? One of these beliefs we embraced, the other we scorned as superstition. But perhaps each was false, equally. Perhaps the Plague was neither of God nor the Devil, but simply a thing in Nature, as the stone on which we stub a toe.

She would have had to keep her headscarf on, never laugh, never smile—if she smiles at a man he will think, 'Ah, she loves me,' " Mohamed explained. As

O let it be enough what thou hast done, When spotted deaths ran arm'd through every street, With poison'd darts, which not the good could shun, The speedy could outfly, or valiant meet. The living few, and frequent funerals then, Proclaim'd thy wrath on this forsaken place: And now those few who are return'd agen Thy searching judgments to their dwellings trace. From Annus Mirabilis, The Year of Wonders, 1666, by John Dryden

I do not ask for your abosolution. I simply ask you to see that there is only one thing to do when we fall, and that is get up, and go on with the life that is set in front of us, and try to so the good of which our hands are capable for the people who come in our way. That, at least, has been my path

I USED TO LOVE this season. The wood stacked by the door, the tang of its sap still speaking of forest. The hay made, all golden in the low afternoon light. The rumble of the apples tumbling into the cellar bins. Smells and sights and sounds that said this year it would be all right: there'd be food and warmth for the babies by the time the snows came.

And yet what manner of man would I be, who has so much to say in the contest of words, if now I shirked this contest of blood?

The word for mother, umm, is the root of the words for "source, nation, mercy, first principle, rich harvest; stupid, illiterate, parasite, weak of character, without opinion." In

If Islamic countries can't come up with their own principles for women's competition," she said in one widely reported speech, "then the way dictated by Western oppressing countries will be imposed on us." Iran

His spirit is like a guttering candle

What he says may be true for English, but why should I want to go into this God's house if only English are there? If God wanted us in this house than he would have sent our ancestors such a book.

Perhaps it was pride, merely, to seek these souls that God had chosen to abandon. Perhaps it was in itself a sin….

I had little wish to recall the callow peddler who would turn over any dank stone in his quest for knowledge.

How easily Caleb had taken the teachings of his youth—the many gods, the animate spirit world—and simply recast them in terms of our teaching.

I am not myself. As you know, better than anyone. You have seen how I am, these last months. I don't know how to explain it, it is beyond any words that I have to describe. But it is as if there is a tempest in my mind, and I cannot see through the murk of it. I cannot think clearly—indeed, much of the time I cannot think at all. There is only a weight in my heart, a formless dread that shapes itself into pain. And then a greater dread of more pain

The island cried out to me. I longed to feast my senses on its light and air, and restore my spirit with its peace. If I answered its call, soon enough I would live again in the familiar rhythms of its seasons—the wincing winters and dappled summers, its shy, reluctant springtide and gleaming, bronzed leaf fall.

But how would we repay the kindness of those who received us, if we carried the seeds of the Plague to them? What burden would we bear if, because of us, hundreds die who might have lived?