Home > Work > The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)
121 " Her future unrolled before her like a dreadful tapestry, its pattern set and immutable. There would be a wedding, and then a house somewhere nearby on the avenue, with a nursery for the children that were, of course, mandatory. She’d spend interminable summers in the country, traveling from estate to estate, playing endless games of tennis, chafing under the strain of being constantly a guest in someone else’s home. Then would come middle age, and the expected taking-up of a cause, Temperance or Poverty or Education—it did not matter so long as it was virtuous and uncontroversial, and furnished opportunities for luncheons with dowdy speakers in severe dress. Then old age and decrepitude, the slow transformation into a heap of black taffeta in a bath chair, to be displayed briefly at parties and then put out of sight; to spend her last days sitting bewildered by the fire, wondering where her life had gone. "
― Helene Wecker , The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)
122 " All at once his throat filled with tears. "
123 " There was an immense weight on his chest. An eternity of water lay above him, pushing down, breaking his body and grinding his bones. He had never been so cold. He felt the nibbling of a thousand tiny teeth. A sucking blackness stretched in every dimension. "
124 " And indeed they didn’t, nor did they collide with their neighbors. For others were noticing them now, this tall and striking couple that spun together in a world of their own. The crowd began to pull away from them, giving them space, the better to watch. Faster and faster they went—with their eyes closed! How did they do it?—and now the Golem’s steps were small precise movements that fitted to his exactly, describing a circle with himself at its center. In the midst of all that movement a stillness rose inside him, and for a long and beautiful moment everything else fell away— Someone "