Quotes from Rachel Kadish

The greatest act of love—indeed, the only religion she could comprehend—was to speak the truth about the world.

A woman such as I is a rocky cliff against which a man tests himself before retreating to safe pastures. I cannot fault any such man as takes what ease the world offers him.

Nowhere in the known world, it seemed to her, could she live as she'd been created: at once a creature of body and of mind. It was a precept so universal as to seem a law of nature: one aspect of a woman's existence must dominate the other. And a woman like Ester must choose, always, between desires: between fealty to her own self, or to the lives she might bring forth and nurture.

I don't think I'm strong enough," Aaron said. Slowly the steam faded from the pub's windows. Helen was staring across the street as well. She said, "How do you think people get strong?

Even motionless, she was decisive.

Do not succumb to darkness. Lack of hope, as I learned long ago, is a deadly affliction. And in one so highly regarded as you, it is not merely a blight on one precious soul, but a contagion that may leave many in darkness. Recall that the light you bear, though it may flicker, yet illuminates the path for our people. Bear it. For in this world there is no alternative.

Life is muddy. Denying that—thinking there's only one noble path above the fray—can be a poisonous approach to life.

More than half the candle remained. She could read an hour before it guttered, longer if she took another candle from the drawer. How many had she burned already this month? Her hours of night reading seemed to grow ever more necessary, for each day's study compelled her to explore these volumes further, and with a fierce attention impossible when others were about.

I love the escape. Academics aren't supposed to say that, but it's true. I love to dig into somebody else's vision, nightmare, utopia, whatever. I love how books put a dent in our egos— turns out we're not the first sentient generation on the planet after all. Other people have been just as perspective, just as worked up, about the same damn human problems we face.

The greatest curse, he'd thought, was to be stuck in one's own time—and the greatest power was to see beyond its horizons. Studying history had given him the illusion of observing safely from outside the trap. Only that's what the world was: a trap. The circumstances you were born to, the situations you found yourself in—to dodge that fray was impossible. And what you did within it was your life.

The story that had once singed and flared in her had long since receded, as her habit of silence turned, over the decades, into law. Did she mean to take it to the grave with her, then? Plainly, that was what she was going to do. She was going to take it to the grave. And it would end there. Dust.

My grandmother, Ester said, wished not to trap her love into taking her. She said a heart is a free thing, and once enslaved will mutiny....

The faded silhouette of Masada offered itself, its mute lines clear testimony for those who knew to read what was written there. A stark choice. Self-immolation or slavery. Freedom or life, but not both.

If a Jew tell a lie because the truth of his faith cannot be tolerated by those around him, shouldn't one then prosecute the world rather than the Jew?

Then it was only right that she do as her spirit told her, and let the struggle itself answer the question of which was the stronger: her will or her womanly nature.

He'd always pitied those ensnared in the time periods he studied—people captured in resin, their fates sealed by their inability to see what was coming. The greatest curse, he'd thought, was to be stuck in one's own time—and the greatest power was to see beyond its horizons.

And because history cared not at all if the negligent left its missives unread, she insisted on caring.

You have a beauty of a sort," he said. "But more important than that, you have enough manly strength in you to match me.

A woman's body, said the world, was a prison in which her mind must wither.

Do you hear the argument the other side makes?

The words of prayer are like birds, Ester," he said gently. "They soar.

Let me begin afresh. Perhaps, this time, to tell the truth. For in the biting hush of ink on paper, where truth ought raise its head and speak without fear, I have long lied.

For love does not set shackles, nor entrap.

The imperative—she whispered it to herself—to live. The universe was ruled by a force, and the force was life, and life, and life—a pulsing, commanding law of its own.