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1 " It is a terrible, wretched thing to love someone whom you know cannot love you. There are things that are more dreadful. There are many human pains more grievous. And yet it remains both terrible and wretched. Like so many things, it is insoluble. "
― Naomi Alderman , Disobedience
2 " Often it may seem that time has taken us very far from our origin. But if we take only a few more steps, we will round the corner and see a familiar place. And sometimes it may seem that in all our traveling we have returned to the place where we began. But although the view may be similar, it will never be identical; we should remember that there is no return. "
3 " Silence is not power. It’s not strength. Silence is the means by which the weak remain weak and the strong remain strong. Silence is a method of oppression. "
4 " And all we have, in the end, are the choices we make. "
5 " All things, when measured in spans of years, seem simple. But human lives do not occur in years, but slowly, day by day. A year may be easy, but its days are hard indeed. "
6 " Small places make for small lives "
7 " You can’t solve anyone else’s life for them. But then, if you see someone struggling with a heavy load, isn’t it forbidden to walk on without helping them? "
8 " you belong in three places: the place you grew up, the place where you went to college, and the place where the person you love is. "
9 " Sometimes I think that God is punishing me. For what we did together. Sometimes I think that my life is a punishment for wanting. And the wanting is a punishment, too. "
10 " A year may be easy, but its days are hard indeed. "
11 " because, honestly, which of us really understands why we do the things we do? "
12 " Scott once said to me that you belong in three places: the place you grew up, the place where you went to college, and the place where the person you love is. I’d add a fourth component to that: the place where you first sought professional psychological help. "
13 " no true knowledge is ever reached without pain. "
14 " Do you think that you are the stars, perhaps? And that I am the moon? I thought you were the moon. But I have been absent, too, you know. I think I have been absent all this time. "
15 " You need that disagreement, we all do, so that we can realize that the world isn’t smooth and even, not everyone agrees with everyone else. You need a window into another world to work out what you think of your own. "
16 " Dovid thought: our words will swallow us. We have spat them out, but in the end they will drown us. "
17 " All things, when measured in spans of years, seem simple. But human lives do not occur in years but slowly, day by day. A year may be easy, but its days are hard indeed. "
18 " We who live in Hendon now like to imagine ourselves elsewhere. We carry our homeland on our backs, unpacking it where we find ourselves., never too thoroughly nor too well, for we will have to pack it up again one day. Hendon does not exist; it is only where we are, which is the least of all ways to describe us. "
19 " But it’s more complicated than you think, how you feel about a person. Sometimes I think that if she’d asked me, even once, to stay, I would have stayed forever. The Rabbis teach that we each hold worlds within us. Maybe both these things are true. But she never asked. And so I had to leave. "
20 " We are not ruled by blind instinct like the beasts. Uniquely, we can listen to the commands of God, can understand them, yet can choose disobedience. It is this, and only this, which gives our obedience its value. "