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101 " There is no divine judge. So we must supply for ourselves notions of good and ill. "
― Rachel Kadish , The Weight of Ink
102 " Once, before the fire had burned away all pretense, she might have become the sort of wife who would shutter her desire to learn, keep a civil tongue, profess happiness with what was available to her. She was no longer that person. The human heart—her mother’s, her grandmother’s, her own—was a chaos of desire. And she could counter it only with the life in her mind. By living in words and books and cool reason. Recording the map traced by her thoughts, though it be an infinitesimal gesture, small and unseen. A fingernail’s scrape on a prison wall. "
103 " you’d have understood how easily the blade of spite turns in one’s hands, and cuts one’s own palms. "
104 " I believe the only lesson Thomas took from Oxford was that he detested schooling. "
105 " Read the newspaper, Aaron’s father liked to say, you’ll grow to be an educated man. "
106 " no classes or exams, just acres of time in which to research and write—had swiftly revealed itself to be a glorified form of orphanhood. "
107 " The words of prayer are like birds, Ester,” he said gently. “They soar. "
108 " The world too much hates a freed thought or heart. "
109 " One out of three.” He spoke quietly but with an intensity she instantly feared. “One out of every three Jews in the world. In my country, in Poland, nine out of every ten of us died. "
110 " You name a country, and I’ll tell you about a time it became obsessed with killing Jews. "
111 " A woman may in some circumstances acquire what she desires without the protection of a man.” She regarded Ester. “If you find a way to live as you wish, unnatural though it might be, you’ll carry on your shoulders the weight of a thousand wives’ wishes. Though aloud all may curse you as a very devil. "
112 " Yes, and how did Josephus know?” continued Helen. “He wasn’t on Masada, he was with the Roman army. "
113 " Let the pages burn, for such be the fate of the soul, that all our striving be dust, and none in the bright living world ever know truly what once lived and died in another heart. And let me dispense with my foolish dream of leaving the tracery of my thought whole, perhaps to be read in an age in which there is greater kindness. It is not such an age. Let the truth be ash. "
114 " She said to him then, crisply, “Never underestimate the passion of a lonely mind. "
115 " This was before the Nazis settled on a more efficient method—machine-gunning Jews into the Babi Yar canyon, thirty thousand in two days. "
116 " They just want to be liked. Being liked is their . . . sugar rush. "
117 " No escape to other worlds, nor refuge from the endless river of days. "
118 " 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. "
119 " She pressed her fingertips into the hard wood of the handrail until they whitened. She would constrict the world to a pinhole. "
120 " So Mary spoke always, posing each declaration as a question, soliloquy in guise of conversation. "