01Undated[The haggadah] was made to teach, and it will continue to teach. And it might teach a lot more than just the Exodus story."What do you mean?"Well, from what you've told me, the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You've got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything's humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize 'the other' -- it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists... same old, same old. It seems to me that the book, at this point, bears witness to all that.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
02UndatedA book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
03UndatedBook burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
04UndatedWho is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
05UndatedI wonder where he lies. Wedged under a rock, with a thousand small mouths already sucking on his spongy flesh. Or floating still, on and down, on and down, to wider, calmer reaches of the river. I see them gathering: the drowned, the shot. Their hands float out to touch each other, fingertip to fingertip. In a day, two days, they will glide on, a funeral flotilla, past the unfinished white dome rising out of its scaffolds on a muddy hill in Washington. Will the citizens recognize them, the brave fallen, and uncover in a gesture of respect? Or will they turn away, disgusted by the bloated mass of human rot?Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
06UndatedYou know that your church has always taken a view on these matters very different from ours, from the day that the first printing press was assembled. Your church did not want your holy scriptures in the hands of ordinary people. We felt differently. To us, printing was an avokat ha kodesh, a holy work. Some rabbis even likened the press to an altar. We call it 'writing with many pens' and saw it as furthering the spread of the word that began with Moses on Mount Sinai. So, my good father, you go and write the order to burn that book, as your church requires of you. And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires of me. Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
07UndatedThe common soldiers did not blame him for his excessive grief. They knew him. They knew his flaws. Indeed, I think they loved him all the more because he was flawed, as they were, and did not hide his passionate, blemished nature.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
08UndatedAs wars dwindled to skirmishes and our strength grew, so David was able to spend less time with military commanders and more with the engineers and overseers who were fanning out throughout the land, digging cisterns, making roads, fortifying, connecting, and generally making a nation out of our scattered people.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
09UndatedI have lived most of my life in soldiers’ camps. I know what they saw. I know how they think. Their confidence sours as sudden as curdled milk.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
10UndatedI thought it best to add nothing further, to let the line of his thought lead him to his own conclusions.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
11UndatedAvner had lived too long and become too canny to claim the crown of Israel for himself.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
12UndatedEven though he said no store in uncanny things, he was soldier enough to value with whatever weapon came to hand.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
13UndatedWhen a kingdom rests on it, I always expect difficulty. Then, if there is none, no blame. But if there is, one is prepared.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
14UndatedNo one sits, as you do, so close to a king, who does not begin to grasp how the levers of power work, and the cost of the oil that must grease them.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
15UndatedThis night he was a king before he was a man. At this time, this troubled me. Later, I would have cause to wish it were always so.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
16UndatedDavid was at his best in group settings, soldier enough to join in the raucous jests, king enough to make it matter that he remembered some moments of bravery or sacrifice, and praised each man accordingly.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
17UndatedHe is able to put aside personal feelings and see the broad strokes. Experience counts in these things.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
18UndatedDavid ran through concrete advantages. And then set aside the practical. The pragmatist was gone, replaced by the poet and mystic.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
19UndatedIf soldiering did not interest him, the soldiers themselves were another matter. He loved to sit with the men and draw out their first-hand stories of past campaigns.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
20UndatedThe stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
21UndatedTo know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
22UndatedOne did not need to penetrate David's secret counsels or insinuate a man in his bodyguard. All one needed was a pair of years and access to the royal precincts. Just to eavesdrop upon his singing was to develop an accurate idea of his state of mind.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
23UndatedFrom "Caleb's Crossing"--This is an excellent thought about family though it doesn't apply to me. I am lucky in my brothers."Now, of all times in my life, did I wish Caleb truly was my brother, rather than that selfish, imperious, weak-willed soul to whom fate had shackled me.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
24UndatedCuriosity – if not desire, if not plain kindness – might have led him to greater zeal.Geraldine Brooks / quote ↗
