Akiva Quotes

If we don't keep people engaged, we're not going to move you. And if we move you, we've done something useful. That's what anybody who writes genre knows. ~ Akiva Goldsman

Tomorrow they will start the apocalypse.
Tonight, they let themselves look at each other, just for a little while. ~ Laini Taylor

Akiva had envisioned this meeting many different ways, and in none of them has his father been naked. ~ Laini Taylor

As you always discover when you make something, typically if your object isn't frivolous, people's relationship to it isn't frivolous. ~ Akiva Goldsman

I'm all about 'Halo 2'. ~ Akiva Schaffer

I take a lot of ladies' vitamins, because I never buy my own and that's what's in the house. More iron. ~ Akiva Schaffer

Love scenes are the hardest things in the world and if you enjoy them, that's wonderful, because nobody making them sits there and goes, 'Let's do that again tomorrow.' ~ Akiva Goldsman

A fence to wisdom is silence. ~ Rabbi Akiva

The goddess of assassins has tasted my blood, he thought, and he wondered if she liked it, and wanted more. ~ Laini Taylor

Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death. ~ Laini Taylor

Finding Akiva's door still closed, Liraz gave a chuff of derision and didn't knock but only crashed it open and glared at the sight that greeted them. Akiva and Karou, eyes bleary with desire, facing each other on a stone slab and touching, hands to hearts ... "Well," Liraz said, her voice as dry as the rest of her was not. "At least you still have your clothes on. ~ Laini Taylor

Of all the rabbinic sages of antiquity, perhaps none was more influential or famous than Rabbi Akiva. ~ Meir Soloveichik

Sometimes you see auteur TV shows and movies, and those are great. ~ Akiva Goldsman

Nd when he let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn't realize it until he pulled away and the absence rushed back in. ~ Laini Taylor

In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn't stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have been the forced inversion of laughter-like a soul pulled inside out to reveal its rawest meats. ~ Laini Taylor

Is life worth keeping on with, whatever happens?" Was she talking about living broken, living with loss? Did she count his loss a real one, and did she really want to know or was there a barb in this somewhere? Sometimes, Akiva felt like he didn't know his sister at all. "Yes," he said, wary, thinking of the thurible, and Karou. "As long as you're alive, there's always a chance things will get better."
"Or worse," said Liraz.
"Yes," he conceded. "Usually worse. ~ Laini Taylor

What happens is that the experience of writers working together and the idea of creative collaboration is so delightful, but it has been relegated to TV. ~ Akiva Goldsman

I came back to find you," Akiva said. "I don't know why. Karou. Karou. I don't know why." His voice was so faint she could barely hear him. "Just to find you and be in the world that you're in ... ~ Laini Taylor

I have now become so infatuated with television. I think television has become elegant. ~ Akiva Goldsman

He watched her with a hopeful, piercing scrutiny that made her tingle, she felt so ... seen. ~ Laini Taylor

Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted. ~ Rabbi Akiva

A pause came between them, and it was so full of Akiva that Karou imagined she could smell him. ~ Laini Taylor

As far back as she could remember, a phantom life had mocked her with its impenetrable "something else," but now it was the opposite. Here, in the circle of Akiva's presence, even as they spoke of war and siege and enduring enmity, she felt herself being drawn into the warm absoluteness and rightness of him, like he was both place and person and, contrary to all reason, exactly where she was supposed to be. ~ Laini Taylor

War is all we've been taught, but there are other ways to live. We can find them, Akiva. We can invent them. This is the beginning, here." She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning. ~ Laini Taylor

So while his uncle taunted him, probing for a weak spot-it wasn't enough to kill; he had to torment - Akiva heard what he said, but none of it touched him. It was like threatening darkness at the break of day. ~ Laini Taylor

No life is more important than another. And nothing has been without purpose. Nothing. What if we are all part of a great pattern that we may someday understand? And one day, when we have done what we alone are capable of doing, we get to rise up and reunite with those we have loved the most, forever embraced. What if we get to become... stars. ~ Akiva Goldsman

He remembered a story Madrigal had told him once: the human tale of the golem. It was a thing shaped of clay in the form of a man, brought to life by carving the symbol aleph into its brow. Aleph was the first symbol of an ancestral human alphabet, and the first letter of the Hebrew word truth; it was the beginning. Watching Karou rise to her feet, radiant in a fall of lapis hai, in a woven dress the colour of tangerines, with a loop of silver beads at her throat and a look of joy and relief and ... love ... on her beautiful face, Akiva knew that she was his aleph, his truth and beginning. His soul. ~ Laini Taylor

Akiva felt the tilt of the world trying to tip him forward: to be nearer to her
nearer and touching
as though that were the only state of rest, and every other action and movement were geared to achieving it. ~ Laini Taylor

In the beginning, sin is like a thread of a spider's web. But in the end, it becomes like the cable of a ship. ~ Rabbi Akiva

His warmth was like a gift given and snatched away, and she stood there with her back to the window, feeling chilled, bereft, and undone. And angry. It was a childish, cartoonish anger- facing Akiva, she had wanted to beat her fists at his chest and then fall against him and feel his arms close around her. ~ Laini Taylor

What?" demanded Liraz. "Why are you laughing?" "Because life's a bastard," was all Akiva could say. "Well then," was his sister's flat reply. "I guess we fit right in. ~ Laini Taylor

Love is a luxury."
"No. Love is an element."
An element. Like air to breathe, earth to stand on. ~ Laini Taylor

Her heart was gasping, empty. Whatever resistance had been in her, she gave it up. Her hands knew what they wanted: They wanted Akiva, the spark and heat of him. Even in the warmth of the Moroccan spring, she was cold, as if the only thing with a chance of warming her was him. ~ Laini Taylor

She thought of Akiva, the night he had come to her at the river, the crushing pain and shame in his face, and love, still love - sorrow and love and hope - and she remembered the night of the Warlord's ball, how Akiva had always been the right to Thiago's wrong, the heat to the Wolf's chill, the safety to this monster's menace. ~ Laini Taylor

I can touch you," she marveled, and she couldn't
or at least didn't
resist the urge to further prove it by sliding her palm over the hot-smooth terrain of his chest until she felt as if she were holding his heartbeat in her hand.
"As much as you want," he said, and there was a trembling in him, but it wasn't from pain. ~ Laini Taylor

'The Watch' is first and foremost a comedy, but since I got to shoot the film using elements from the sci-fi genre, I wanted to make sure the alien didn't look goofy. I got to make a real alien that looks dangerous. That was a big plus for me because I got to do something really fun and cool. ~ Akiva Schaffer

In moments Akiva was up in the ether, scarcely feeling the sting of ice crystals in the thin air. He let his glamour fall away, and his wings were like sheets of fire sweeping the black of the heavens. He moved at speed, onward toward another human city to find another doorway bitter with the devil's magic, and after that another, until all bore the black handprint ... Once all the doors were marked, the end would begin. And it would begin with fire. ~ Laini Taylor

Don't I deserve to finally be free of you? ~ Laini Taylor

Wheresoever thou findest a high mountain or a lofty hill and a green tree, know that an idol is there! ~ Akiva Ben Joseph

Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world. No matter what happens. I need you to remember that I love you. ~ Laini Taylor

Like a twisted olive tree in its 500th year, giving then its finest fruit, is man. How can he give forth wisdom until he has been crushed and turned in the Hand of God. ~ Rabbi Akiva

A détente," he said, in a tone of warning, "can only be as strong as the least trustworthy on either side."
"Then let it not be our side," said Akiva. "It's the best we can do. ~ Laini Taylor

It's all I want, to be beside you, helping you. If it takes forever, all the better, if it's forever with you. ~ Laini Taylor

Infinities are not for casual exploration. You could fall and keep falling. You could get lost. ~ Laini Taylor

Seventh bearer of the cursed name Akiva." Here he paused, speculative. "No Misbegotten ever bore that name to manhood before you. Did you know that? Old Byon the steward, he gave it out of spite. Wanted your mother to beg him not to. Any other woman in the harem would have, but not Festival. 'Scribble whatever you like on your list, old man,' she told him. 'My son will not be tangled in your feeble fates.' ~ Laini Taylor

She'd spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened
apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won
some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it
but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies. Food, weapons, happiness.
With hope that the weapons could in time vanish from the picture. ~ Laini Taylor

Let there be a wide breadth of possible ways to create. ~ Akiva Goldsman

Before you taste anything, recite a blessing. ~ Rabbi Akiva

This is Wedge Antilles of the New Republic. I am trapped on the Star Destroyer Vigilance in the space above Akiva, and I am in - ~ Chuck Wendig

Beloved are Israel, for they were called children of God; still greater was the love in that it was made known to them that they were called children of God, as it is written, 'Ye are the children of the Lord your God.' ~ Akiva Ben Joseph

And the stone table was between them, a barrier, but there could be no barrier to the smile that was her answer. It was another new species, and Akiva thought that he could spend a thousand years with her
please
and still be discovering new species of smiles. ~ Laini Taylor

Silence is the fence around wisdom ~ Rabbi Akiva

Jesting and levity accustom a man to lewdness. ~ Akiva Ben Joseph

An angel lay dying in the mist. Once upon a time.
And the devil should have finished him off without a second thought.
But she hadn't. And if she had? Karou had wondered it a hundred different ways. She'd even wished for it, in her blackest grief at the Kasbah, when all she could see was the death that had come of her mercy.
If she'd killed Akiva that day, or even just let him die, the war would have ground on unbroken. Another thousand years? Maybe. But she hadn't, and it hadn't. "The age of wars is over," Akiva had just said, and even as Karou saw what she saw and no possibility of mistake, and even as her whole being gathered itself into a scream, her heart defied it. The age of wars was over, and Akiva would not die like this.
The blade entered his heart. ~ Laini Taylor

If R. Akiva was perhaps overly generous in judging his generation, it can perhaps be ascribed to the belief, based on his own experience, that everyone is capable of a dramatic life change. ~ Meir Soloveichik

It [Hancock] happens to be a big budget film and big star like Will Smith, but it actually has a lot of weight to it. But it was very smart and very intelligent and had this kind of historical element to it that I was fascinated by. It's not silly. It's not stupid. It's fun, but I think it's smart. I think Akiva [Goldsman] writes really interesting material and there you have it. ~ Charlize Theron

Whose acts are greater, man's or God's?" Rabbi Akiva answered that man's acts are greater. Turnus Rufus responded that the heavens and earth are God's creations which man cannot equal. Rabbi Akiva then brings sheaves of wheat and cakes and says to Turnus Rufus, "The sheaves of wheat were made by God while these cakes were made by man." He explains that man is not meant to eat wheat as it grows from the ground but rather to process and develop it into a complete product. Rabbi Akiva then says, "Why does a child come out with an umbilical cord until the mother cuts it?" Rabbi Akiva is trying to communicate to Turnus Rufus that natural, God-created states are not necessarily perfect. Judaism does not believe in taking the natural world as it is; humans are meant to take the materials God provided and improve on them. There are imperfections in the world, and we need to perfect them. Successful ~ H.W. Charles

Everything lined up. It has been easy, as if it were meant-"
"Meant!" she said, amazed. She spun to face him, which, in the crush, brought her against his chest as if they were still dancing. She fought backward for space. As if what were meant?"
"You," he said. "And me. ~ Laini Taylor

There is a moment in the tractate Menahot when the Rabbis imagine what takes place when Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. In this account (there are several) Moses ascends to heaven, where he finds God busily adding crownlike ornaments to the letters of the Torah. Moses asks God what He is doing and God explains that in the future there will be a man named Akiva, son of Joseph, who will base a huge mountain of Jewish law on these very orthographic ornaments. Intrigued, Moses asks God to show this man to him. Moses is told to 'go back eighteen rows,' and suddenly, as in a dream, Moses is in a classroom, class is in session and the teacher is none other than Rabbi Akiva. Moses has been told to go to the back of the study house because that is where the youngest and least educated students sit.

Akiva, the great first-century sage, is explaining Torah to his disciples, but Moses is completely unable to follow the lesson. It is far too complicated for him. He is filled with sadness when, suddenly, one of the disciples asks Akiva how he knows something is true and Akiva answers: 'It is derived from a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai.' Upon hearing this answer, Moses is satisfied - though he can't resist asking why, if such brilliant men as Akiva exist, Moses needs to be the one to deliver the Torah. At this point God loses patience and tells Moses, 'Silence, it's my will. ~ Jonathan Rosen

Akiva."
"Akiva." It pleased her to say it. She may have been the one whose name meant music, but his sounded like it. Saying it made her want to sing it, to lean out a window and call him home. To whisper it in the dark. ~ Laini Taylor

Soon, everything else would come rushing at him. Like the ground to a falling man, it would come rushing up and hit him all at once - the place, the company, her words; one implication would lead to another and shatter him - but around that intake of breath the world hung silent and bright, so bright, and Akiva only knew this one thing, and held on to it and wanted to live inside of it and stay there forever.
Karou was alive. ~ Laini Taylor

Nothing is better than the moment you have Michael Bolton dressed as Forrest Gump and you see it in action. ~ Akiva Schaffer

He who remains unmarried impairs the divine image. ~ Rabbi Akiva

One time, my mom told us, 'No TV.' It was 3 P.M., and I was sneaking it in. She put her hand on the back of the TV to see if it was warm, and it was. So she pulled the cord out of the wall, opened the second-floor window, and just threw it out the window. ~ Akiva Schaffer

You learn, even at 'S.N.L.,' that the funniest scripts a lot of the time were written with the actor, because they know what makes people laugh. It's always going to be better if they own it. ~ Akiva Schaffer

I think people underestimate the value of collaboration, especially for writers. ~ Akiva Goldsman

And the monkey flips the switch. ~ Akiva Goldsman

Death," said Akiva. His life was leaving him fast now that he no longer held his wound. His eyes just wanted to drift closed. "I'm ready."
"Well, I'm not. I hear it's dull, being dead."
She said it lightly, amused, and he peered up at her. Had she just made a joke? She smiled.
Smiled
He did, too. Amazed, he felt it happening, as if her smile had triggered a reflex in him. "Dull sounds nice," he said, letting his eyes flutter closed. "Maybe I can catch up on my reading. ~ Laini Taylor

Jesting and levity lead a man to lewdness. ~ Rabbi Akiva