Anita Diamant Quotes

One of my great secrets was knowing I had the power to make her smile.

Sometimes friends grow apart. You tell each other everything and you're sure this is a person you'll know the rest of your life but then she stops writing or calling, or you realize she's really not so nice, or she turns into a right-winger.

When a shy person smiles, it's like the sun coming out.

Reverend Hartshorn's face had puckered into a scowl. "This, er, passionate experience of the divine to which you lay claim is not necessarily evidence of salvation," he said, choosing his words carefully. According to his theology, election was an absolute mystery; however, the notion that this foul-smelling lout could lay claim to revelation seemed monstrous. "The

And then what do I do? Joyce asked, her voice suddenly pinched.

Your daughters are my wives and want none of you. Your grandsons are my sons, and owe you nothing. While I stood on your land, I gave you honor you did not deserve, but now I am not bound by the obligations of guests and hosts.

I wanted to cry, but I realized that I was too old for that. I would be a woman soon and I would have to learn how to live with a divided heart.

It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.

Italians are just as good as Jews when it comes to guilt.

The world seemed so perfect, so complete, and yet so impermanent that I nearly wept.

The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.

Asked, Would you call yourself impetuous, Addie?

I would curse the whole nation but for that Canaanite woman's kindness ... I never saw her face, but I imagine it shining with light and beauty. Indeed, when I think of her, I see the face of the full moon.

I like the way he danced. And then I like the way we danced together.

I never cared for red headed men. I think they look like shrimp boiled to peel.

I always felt I understood myself better after we spent time together. And the way she laughed at my wisecracks and thanked me for my opinions made me think maybe I was as smart and funny as she said i was.

Don't let anyone tell you things aren't better than they used to be.

Mimba had been right about white people. The best thing was to treat them like ghosts and cannibals, not to be trusted. But sometimes, a white ghost would look at you straight on, with a full smile, eye to eye. The smile of the eye was the secret, Mimba had taught her. You had to be careful always, but every now and again you could act as though they had souls, too. Easter was one like that.

Making plans is a game. Life chooses for you.

I had Benia's hands, Meryt's friendship, the feel of newborn flesh, the smiles of new mothers, a little girl who laughed in my kitchen, a house of my own. It was more than enough.

The other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.

If you sit on the bank of a river, you see only a small part of its surface. And yet, the water before your eyes is proof of unknowable depths.

Egypt loved the lotus because it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved.

It is terrible how much has been forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing.

It took me until I was almost forty before I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.

When I think back, I get mad at what they did to those poor men. Ernie must have had PTSD - they called it shell shock - and the doctors told him to keep it all bottled up inside. They didn't know any better, but it was like treating syphilis with candy bars.

The story it told was unremarkable: a tale of love found and lost- the oldest story in the world. The only story.

Wherever you walk, I go with you. Selah.

With breast cancer." Father Sherry's hand was resting on the statue's shoulder. "Theresa was

His whole life he tried to make things better for poor children, but his real calling was being a father. It was a talent with him. As soon as our girls could sit up, he was wheeling them to the library and taking out books to read them bedtime stories.

No one would ever call Katherine Walters a pretty woman: her face was strangely flat and one eye was a tiny bit higher than the other. After Flora left, she took off her hat, cut her bangs, and was suddenly striking and stylish, which is actually much better than pretty.

They sang the words in unison, yet somehow created a web of sounds with their voices. It was like hearing a piece of fabric woven with all the colors of a rainbow. I did not know that such beauty could be formed by the human mouth. I had never heard harmony before.

The great mother whom we call Innana gave a gift to woman that is not known among men, and this is the secret of blood. The flow at the dark of the moon, the healing blood of the moon's birth - to men, this is flux and distemper, bother and pain. They imagine we suffer and consider themselves lucky. We do not disabuse them.
In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month's death, preparing the body to receive the new month's life, women give thanks - for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood.

In Egypt, I loved the perfume of the lotus. A flower would bloom in the pool at dawn, filling the entire garden with a blue musk so powerful it seemed that even the fish and ducks would swoon. By night, the flower might wither but the perfume lasted. Fainter and fainter, but never quite gone. Even many days later, the lotus remained in the garden. Months would pass and a bee would alight near the spot where the lotus had blossomed, and its essence was released again, momentary but undeniable.

Having all those women together in one place was like looking through a photo album of my life: from when I was a baby to the Saturday Club to Rockport Lodge to working at the newspaper to meeting Aaron.

Doorway. In Palestine, at least, no one would burst into tears at the sight of her. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Tedi traced her name into the dirt and remembered Mr. Loederman's wife, Lena, an old-fashioned woman who wore crocheted collars. They had had a grown son, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. All dead, she realized. She should have hugged him back. The accordion raced up a scale. Young voices

brown paper bags from the pharmacist.

How did I get to be the woman I am today? It started in that library, in the reading club. That's where I started to be my own person.

She said, Hiking is the same thing as walking, only hotter and twice as far as you want to go. But usually, you're glad you went.

I Have No Choice, Addie.

Sometimes luck was just another word for creation, which was as relentless as destruction.

The older Irene got, the more she swore. I remember when her grandson pooped in his diaper at his christening, she said, 'Holy shit,' loud enough for everyone to hear. The look on that priest's face!

Midwives do not fear life.

My heart is a ladle of sweet water brimming over.

Nothing is as good as it used to be." I swore I would never talk like that and you know what? Now that I'm an old lady myself, I think that most things are better than they used to be. Look at the computers. Look at your sister,

Purple - the color of royalty and holiness and wealth.

When I look at my eighty-five-year-old face in the mirror today, I think, "You're never going to look better than you do today, honey, so smile." Whoever said a smile is the best face-lift was one smart woman.

A girl should always have her own money so she's never beholden to anyone." I

I'll give her the whole day off from work - with pay.

Blood pounded in Ruth's ears. She had never felt weaker or more confused. This was the moment she'd been living for, but the only thought she could muster was that her mother had not been Phyllis, as she'd been told, but Phoebe. The

He goes on and on about war like it is something beautiful and noble, which only means he's never seen it himself. War is hideous and it leaves you covered in shit. I cannot kill anyone else. I will not.

He was golden and beautiful as a sunset.

It's a good thing babies don't give you a lot of time to think. You fall in love with them and when you realize how much they love you back, life is very simple.

As far as I can tell, common sense hasn't been in fashion for a long time.

My world got very small, the way it always does when someone in your family is sick.

He lay across the valley like a sparkling path, the setting sun catching fire on the way.

The New Jewish Wedding How

From her perch, she studied the world...

The hills in the distance held my life in a bowl filled with everything I could possibly want.

People don't talk so much about sad memories.

Local rabbi, who had been seen talking to the Romanians and Hungarians earlier. However it came to pass, as the sun moved toward the horizon, the entire population of Atlit - nearly three hundred that day - gathered as a single congregation. They streamed toward the promenade, dragging benches, chairs, and wooden boxes through the dirt.

I pray I die before they day comes when I do not know if my sons are infants or grandfathers.

Mameh would complain about America; how the apples had no taste

We didn't call it the First World War when it was happening.

She stopped and faced me and took both my hands in hers and asked, "Are you ready to swallow the moon at last?

They all agreed that things were better in the old days. Some of them were sad about it and some were bitter, but it was always, 'Nothing is as good as it used to be.' I swore I would never talk like that and you know what? Now that I'm an old lady myself, I think that most things are better than they used to be. Look at the computers. Look at your sister, the cardiologist, and you, graduating from Harvard. Don't talk to me about the good old days. What was so good?

One night, alone in her Dogtown bed, Judy finally admitted to herself that she had been in love with Cornelius. "In love" precisely as it was described in the novels and poems she had read with Martha; love as a kind of sweet madness that colored everything. Judy had been shocked that strangers across the ocean could describe the workings of her Yankee heart: the preoccupation and yearning, the soaring happiness and keen appreciation of a man's hidden qualities, the sublime meeting of souls. And yet, there was never a mention of the sort of union she'd shared with Cornelius, the longing and fulfillment of the flesh, that could transform two bodies into one.

We are all born of the same mother

Some midwives said that pleasure overheated the seed and killed it. But others claimed that babies only come when women smile. This was the tale she told Jacob to inspire his caresses.

I'm still embarrassed and mad at myself. But after seventy years, I also feel sorry for the girl I used to be. She was awfully hard on herself.

kitchen, where she could count on Tirzah to be

Even a broken clock is right twice every day.

Other people were turning in their papers and I still hadn't written a word. I was starting to panic until out of the blue I remembered my father saying that Jews answered questions with more questions. So that's what I did.

My house was a world of my own possession, a country in which I was ruler and citizen, where I chose and where I served.

Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?

You know, Ava, it's good to be smart, but kindness is more important.

I need a bathroom. And there are way too many people around here for us to

During the Middle Ages some weddings were even held in cemeteries, since it was believed the life-affirming act of marriage could halt a plague.

I would have stayed forever within the garden of Re-mose's childhood, but time is a mother's enemy.

How could she find the courage to kill herself when she had no courage for life?

But I believe that girls need gumption, too, especially in this day and age. I believe you are a girl with gumption.

Betty had never been skinny and she was never really fat. She still had a nice shape, but it was well upholstered now and her new dress made the best of it.

I moved my arms through the water, feeling them float on the surface, watching the waves and wake that followed my gesture. Here was magic, I thought. Here was something holy.

Just as there is no warning for childbirth, there is no preparation for the sight of a first child ... There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name the moment.