Tosca Lee > Quotes

“And I know that God made the heart the most fragile and resilient of all organs, that a lifetime of joy and pain might be encased in one mortal chamber.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“How mighty, how great the One must be, I thought, to send the heavens careening, and yet hear the cry of a single heart.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“The words, when they came to my heart, were so gentle, and familiar -- and so very sad: What is this you have done?”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“I was beloved. I had been hoped for. Somehow, I was necessary.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“My purpose for living, my role in this great scheme was clear to me from the first: to fall down, to worship, to praise, to wait upon the word of El."

"That sounds really boring."

"Really? Imagine the bliss of fulfilling one's created purpose.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“You are necessary to that end, and to me...you are all I have of the garden. You are the image of me and of the One. And if you have wronged, then I have surely repaid your wrong twice over.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“I wanted to be alone with the One. The One who scaled then careened from the heights of the Mount. The One who raised up the man from the mud. The One who fashioned me from a part of the man and knew me more intimately than even the adam.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“My #1 rule is write like no one is ever going to read it. Why? Because it gives you permission to be as audacious as you want.”
― Tosca Lee

“I have always contended that girls are the sturdier of the genders and wondered in secret if the One that Is might not best be identified with the creativity of the female heart.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“Sometime before sleep it occurred to me that the true nature of being without might mean never knowing what one lacked.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“In the beginning there was God...but for me there was Adam.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“A weak man declares a woman a temptress and orders her to cover herself. A strong man covers himself and says nothing.”
― Tosca Lee, The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen

“I slept in the grip of that love, comforted, thinking I should forget my longing within it, knowing that all was somehow well...In the morning when I stirred, I knew...I knew I lay here in my own flesh, but not alone.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“I felt laid bare, a fruit split open to reveal a moldering inside.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“We longed for this world. We coveted it, and we hoped. Even Lucifer, though he wouldn't say it, looked on with greed-softened eyes, infatuated. I deluded myself into thinking that yes, perhaps Elohim had taken him back. Perhaps Elohim had forgotten all, would set him up as a god over this rich and wild new world. The next blessings to come from El would be his, and ours." He shook his head with a brittle laugh, the sound slightly too high-pitched for such a big man.

We had skirted the MIT campus to arrive on Main, a block from my office building.

"And why weren't they? Why couldn't they be?"

He pulled over, put the car in park, and turned to look at me.

"Because then he created them."

"Them?"

"You.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“I will protect you all the days of my life. You will be the mother of all who live and the giver of life to the seed spoken by the One -- the seed that will strike the offspring of the serpent. The One has said it, Isha...today I name you Havah, because you will live, and all who live will come from you, and you will give birth to hope.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“I stared. "But you're saying--"

"Yes, Clay" - her mouth smoothed into a chilly smile - "Image of El, breath of God. In such an unworthy vessel. Something far more precious than diamonds, denied even to us but entrusted to a container of mud.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“Diranno che l’ho tradito, che ho ridotto il suo prezzo a trenta sicli d’argento. Diranno che sono avaro, che ho tradito il mio maestro. Non sanno che sono morto di crepacuore. Per il rammarico…

Per amore.

Se non conoscono me, non conoscevano neanche lui. Quanto ci ha sconvolti con la sua compassione, con la sua riluttanza a salvare un’intera nazione, ma con il desiderio di salvare le singole persone.

Lo definivano un folle, un bugiardo. Ma ora so che era il volto di Dio, che non ci salva dai romani…

Ma da noi stessi

Sono il lebbroso, l’indemoniato. Io, paralizzato dalla paura, ero cieco.

La prostituta, il cadavere nella tomba.

Io, sono tutto questo.

Io, che l’ho rinnegato e l’ho consegnato ai nemici. Io, che muoio per lui. Il mio nome sarà per sempre sinonimo di “traditore”. Ma egli amava i suoi nemici.

Egli mi amava.”
― Tosca Lee, L'uomo che tradì Gesù

“Yes, I call your beautiful world mutant and perverse. So would you if you had seen the original. If you had, you would know how far we've all veered, how like a cancer things have grown.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“«Vieni con me, Giuda», ripeté. «Troverai ciò che stai cercando».

In quel momento, gli credetti. Gli credetti con tutto il cuore”
― Tosca Lee, L'uomo che tradì Gesù

“Sweat trickled down my sides inside my sweater. "Why? Why did you do this?"

"Because this is your life, Clay: fleeting, ephemeral, and insignificant except for one thing, that El loved you. And you have missed it. Missed it all, completely. And now, look at you. Sweating, worried about your life, your story. Did you expect to live forever? Did you think this day would not come? It had to, if not in this way then in some other.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“The adam and I had pondered the death many times since the day he brought me here. But despite our musing about an end of life and our search for evidence of death among fallen and decomposing fruit and the compost of leaves and the refuse of our industry, which we gathered to enrich the soil, I understood the death less well than the explosion that had filled the universe at its incarnation. In fact, every evidence of degrading life seemed only to point back to the sustenance of the living so that I grasped the idea of the death less and less the more I meditated upon it.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“In that instant I knew that as bad as it was, it was going to get much worse.”
― Tosca Lee, The Line Between

“Don't." I heard a tremor in her voice. "Don't do that. You did everything right."

"I don't think I did."

"Yes, you did. You're a good man."

I hated those words. I hated hearing them. Being a good man had won me nothing. Lucian's words echoed somewhere between my brain and the phone line.

I ask you, what is good, really, Clay?

And I knew the answer: not good enough.”
― Tosca Lee, Demon

“Even though he did not hear me sometimes so that I had to repeat my questions a second or third time. By then my tone was as abrasive as the coarse hair or the boar. How he annoyed me!”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“But these are no longer just samples of some disease. They were purchased with lives too save many more. Lives precious to me. Which might be the reason it feels so hard to let them go.”
― Tosca Lee, The Line Between

“A mist crept into the valley—how could this be, by the light of the climbing sun? It drifted over the form in the grass, nearly obscuring it, seeming to draw all sound into itself. I thought I might burst from the strain of that silence... until a single sound shattered it:

The gasp of an indrawn breath.”
― Tosca Lee, Havah: The Story of Eve

“«Voi chi pensate che io sia?».

In quel momento, ebbi la chiara impressione che se avessi detto che per me era un amico, lo sarebbe stato per sempre. Se avessi detto che era un gran lavoratore… lo sarebbe stato per sempre. Non so perché lo pensassi, ma il suo viso mi parve come una pagina bianca pronta per essere riempita, priva dell’angoscia o della follia da cui era tormentato negli ultimi tempi.

Un mio amico.

Il mio cuore sussurrò quella parola.

Il Messia.

Il mio passato, i miei piani ne avevano bisogno.

Era così diverso, così imprevedibile, che spesso nessuno di noi sapeva cosa dire.

Poi mi resi conto di aver paura. Il cuore mi batteva come un randello nelle orecchie. Avevo paura: temevo che qualunque cosa avessi detto, egli avrebbe potuto rispondere che non era vera.

Che non era il Messia.

Che non mi amava.

O peggio, temevo che gli avrei creduto”
― Tosca Lee, L'uomo che tradì Gesù

“Più di tutto, avrei voluto dirgli che volevo restare, perché non avevo altro luogo in cui andare, né persona o cosa a cui rivolgermi in questo mondo, né altre risposte se non quelle che lui poteva darmi; che avevo pregato perché mi offrisse le risposte che cercavo, perché se non lo avesse fatto lui, non avrei saputo dove altro cercarle”
― Tosca Lee, L'uomo che tradì Gesù

“understanding. Do we wish our children to do as they are told forever, simply because we told them what they should do, or because they fear punishment? Or do we hope that they grow in understanding to discern for themselves and freely choose right?”
― Tosca Lee, The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen