Quotes from Ruth Behar

Written with grace and thoroughly researched, One People, One Blood is an ethnography with a lot of heart that also sheds new light on a fascinating and fraught chapter in recent Jewish history.

I was touched by the honesty and courage that I felt it took for you, an academic, to write a book as personal as this one.

Now I know why they call sick people by the word 'patient'. The patient has to have patience. Wait and wait and wait and not lose hope" -Ruthie

We come from people who found hope wherever they went.

But wherever I go, I know I will feel most at home with the wounded of the world, who hold their heads up high no matter how broken they may seem.

It's the land of my ancestors. I need to set my feet on that soil and see how I feel. I have missed my mother's warm tortillas and many more things than I can name.

My life has become a story. One day your life with become a story too. All we can do is have faith that life leads us where it does for a reason, so we can learn things we didn't know about ourselves. One day you will look back on your suffering and you will find a meaning for it and that will be your story" -Baba

Why is it that bad things have to happen so you learn there are lots of good people in the world?" -Ruthie

The only way to deal with fear is to treat it like an unwelcome guest. If you keep entertaining it, you'll never be rid of it.

Some of us have scars you can see and some of us have scars that we hide deep inside, hoping no one will ever ask about them.

It's best you go now,

Some of us come here as shooting stars, to shine brightly for only the briefest moment, and others of us come and overstay our welcome, living to a ripe old age and forgetting our own names.

You listen well and that makes you a good keeper of stories. I am sure that all my memories are safe with you" -Baba

The only way to deal with fear is to treat it like an unwelcome guest. If you keep entertaining it, you'll never be rid of it" -Amara

And what's happening now? My real heart, why does it hurt? I think it wants to break open too. That must be my heart's way of making room for all the love the world still has to give" -Ruthie

Why is it that bad things have to happen so you learn there are lots of good people in the world?

As I take her gift, Danielle says, "For you, Ruthie. Welcome back to the world.

We all have our troubles.

The anxiety around such work [vulnerably written ethnographies] is that it will prove to be beyond criticism, that it will be undiscussable.

I have a huge need for financial security; the emigrant in me has a fear of ending up homeless and in the gutter.