Diane Armstrong > Quotes

“You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do a lot about the width and depth of it.”
― Diane Armstrong, Empire Day

“As long as she was there, I was still the younger generation, but now that the last custodian of my past has gone, I’m in the front line.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“Everything in the world is interconnected, everything moves and changes, but nothing ever vanishes.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“I was her chosen child, I should have been with her when she died. Why do we let people we love just slip away from us? We look away and they’re gone, taking so much love with them.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“the fickleness of fame? One minute you’re a rooster, the next you’re a feather duster.”
― Diane Armstrong, Empire Day

“The best gift that parents can give their children is their own life fully lived, and that’s the gift my father gave me.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“Every human heart keeps a record of its own deeds.”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: for loving a true love. Legs: to run after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, For learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind When it only wants to see why. A”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“the Pope said, ‘Whoever meets Jesus Christ meets Judaism.’ Karol Wojtyla, who was once Bishop of Krakow and helped Jews during the Holocaust, described Judaism as Christianity’s older brother and Christianity as an offshoot of the trunk of King David. He said that it was time that the Catholic Church recognised its responsibility in fostering the anti-Semitism which had made the Holocaust possible, and urged reconciliation between Catholics and Jews.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“I’ve been looking into the jaws of hell,’ Halina said, rubbing her hands in front of the fire. ‘I have to know what you think about evil. What makes people capable of inhuman cruelty?’ He was about to speak but she interrupted. ‘And please don’t tell me about original sin!’ He chuckled. ‘As long as you don’t quote Rousseau and tell me that man was born perfect but was corrupted by his environment!’ They both laughed. ‘For the past two thousand years, philosophers and theologians have torn their hair out trying to find the answer and you want it distilled into one sentence!’ She waited.”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“why the IPN in its wisdom has decided to”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“If you only had one week to investigate this issue, you’d come up with an answer, but if you studied it for a lifetime, you’d never get to the truth.”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“Life is made up of small decisions which, like brick upon brick, imperceptibly shape the structure of our existence.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“But the vet said milk was bad for cats.’ Everything was constantly being turned upside down. Milk used to be good for humans as well as for cats, but now it seemed it was harmful for both. What”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“When we came to the dirt path that led to a barn”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“kind, but stereotyping just the same. I can’t resist saying, ‘To think like us, you need 2000 years of persecution.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“tried to explain that people envied Jews because they were successful, educated and wise, and that for centuries Jews have been persecuted and discriminated against for being different.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“As the baby’s first cry filled the barn, Yossel placed his hand over the tiny mouth. Tears streamed down his face as he invoked curses on the heads of the persecutors of the innocent for ever and ever. The cry died away and the tiny body grew limp. Without”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“She always said that she preferred to give things with a warm hand, while she was alive, so that she could have the pleasure of giving.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“sometimes I think our entire lives are dreams that we finally understand only when they are about to end.”
― Diane Armstrong, The Wild Date Palm

“every good deed tips the balance in favour of humanity, that whoever saves one life, saves the whole world. For the first time, I fully comprehend”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“It wasn’t belief in God, but belief in tradition, heritage and continuity that motivated me. Within my lifetime, six million Jews had died because of their religion and I too had been destined for death. It was a sacred trust to carry the flame forward to the next generation.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“red-rimmed eyes over her.”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“Anti-Semitism seems to be a free-floating cancer in search of a cause.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“The most useful form of DNA is mitrochondrial DNA which is passed without any changes from mothers to children, generation after generation. That’s how they identified the remains of Tsar Nicolas, by comparing his mtDNA with that of the Duke of Edinburgh who was related through the Tsar’s mother.”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“Perhaps when you dug down to the core of evil, all you found was a void, an emotional numbness more terrifying than any malevolence. Was the demarcation line between decent people and bloodthirsty brutes so faint that it was possible to step over it without even feeling a twinge of conscience?”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“propensity Halina had discovered”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“you’re writing about your people. There is no culture like yours. Whatever we have achieved, it’s because of your people. Look at Israel, look what they’ve done with that strip of desert in fifty short years. We’ll never amount to anything in this country unless we learn to think like you.”
― Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations

“When power is in the hands of people with hate in their hearts and weapons in their hands, the law of the jungle takes over.”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey

“Now that it was too late, Halina wished she had found a way of breaking down that wall and reaching the woman on the other side.”
― Diane Armstrong, Winter Journey