Anat Talshir > Quotes

“Lila realized that looking after the girl dispelled any fears of her own, which is how people who have to save their children must feel. When you are looking after someone, your own fear shrinks. The”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“The wife carries the burden of the marriage on her shoulders,” his mother said. “Her husband, herself, both of them, their covenant, and everything else that gets added over the years. And all that is very, very heavy. It is in her power to keep the marriage alive and thriving, but also to drive it to the brink of crisis and back again. For whatever reason, men have not taken this role upon themselves. Perhaps they are not capable. Now, as you know, every empty space, every abyss created in nature fills itself, and this one is filled by women out of a sense of responsibility and maybe also the will to control. It’s a simple matter, really, but in case you haven’t understood, I’ll explain it: your wife must be happy, satisfied, fulfilled, and impassioned, and then the burden of marriage will not be heavy for her. She’ll be prepared to take it upon herself for better and for worse until the very day that one of you shuts your eyes for good.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“He did not like perfumed women. He was, after all, a man of hints, of mere suggestions of aromas, something that reaches the nose, then slips away at once, returning and disappearing with each light breeze. He kept his distance from smells that forced themselves on him, proclaiming their presence. He was intrigued by scents that made him search after them, preferring the concealed and the veiled to the pronounced and prominent.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“With her, he noticed, even the quiet moments were surprising in their fullness. In the silences, there was beauty, and mellowness; there was no rush to get anywhere. Things that were said were absorbed by the skin, not lost to the air. Something about her allowed him to be calm. Normally, he was restless, impatient with stragglers, quick to think and quick to act. But with her, everything was natural, as if they had been together forever and their presence created a peace that sufficed them both, passing from one to the other, back and forth.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“He was charming, but he did not slather his charm around in great quantities. He merely drizzled it.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Hadassah Hospital. She worked on Herschlag in his bed, a towel around his neck, while Nomi held a mirror, a tiny compact, for him to see, according to his wishes. “I can’t stand the prickly little hairs,” Elias said. “I need to take a shower.” The Songstress of Abu Dis, who had not hurried back to the nurse’s station, offered to accompany Elias to the shower. But he refused, and Nomi noticed the resentment in his eyes. “That’s his pride,” the nurse explained to Nomi while Elias showered. “He won’t let anyone bathe him. Doesn’t matter if it takes him an hour, he’ll do it himself. Don’t lock the door!” she shouted amicably. They heard the click of the lock, and Nomi smiled at her. The nurse returned a knowing smile. “He’s a prince,” she said before she went back to her work. “Not bad for a last haircut,” Elias said as he emerged from the shower. Herschlag smiled at the two women in the room. “Ne’iman,” Nomi said, using the Arabic blessing for someone who has bathed. His eyes filled with softness and warmth. Katy returned from the canteen and snuck four bottles of beer into the room, a look of mischief on her face. Elias and Herschlag”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“When you’re old,” he said sagely, “you don’t stop laughing, but when you stop laughing, you grow old. Lila and I laughed a lot,” he continued. “Sometimes we laughed so hard we choked. We didn’t have enough air. When she died, I found myself laughing less and less. That’s when I grew old. Now there’s no more laughter in my life.” “Do”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“it was clear that the invisible line had been crossed, the line where on one side stood potential and doubt and the putting out of feelers that could be revoked at any moment and on the other stood strong emotion, complicit smiles, and a romantic connection that exists on its own and has a presence that cannot be ignored. The world was no longer the way it was before this connection came into existence.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“One must always cast doubts,” George said. “Doubt armies, doubt megalomania; nothing is absolute. Nothing, that is, but the solar system and the stars and the fact that day follows night and night follows day.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“The waiter at the King David brought her change, and, in his eyes, his condolences for the meeting that had not taken place. For five hours he had watched her sit in a garden chair, straight-backed and full of anticipation, until hope had abandoned her and she slumped, weary.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Nobody can bring peace here. It’s not something you can import from America. It has to come from this place, from the people.” “If”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“We are whole and perfect together, not in the sense of being blemish-free but like an old tree that has been there forever. People speak of happiness? Well, we got there and passed right through to the other side.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“It doesn't matter how old you are," Lila said. "What matters is how you live.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“He had not been prepared for that. It was not only what she had said but also the way her lips moved when she said it. He had no idea that it would catch him in the belly. A slight tremor, unfamiliar and uncontrollable, spread from deep inside him. Her voice, her beauty, the lemony scent that rose from her. He wished to say to her, “Your lips are beautiful when you speak,” but instead, he remained silent.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Elias showed her that in the withered bodies of the aged, there was a whole world, the memory of love and accrued wisdom and acceptance of things to come.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Afterward, he would leave her, and he would go to sleep in his own home. "It's hard to understand," he would tell Lila whenever she would press his gently on the subject, "but with us Arabs, a man can come and go, and his wife will not say a word. She'll notice the length of his absences, but she won't press him or ask for explanations. For his part, so long as he acts modestly and doesn't show off his lover in plain view, then he will not bring shame on his family.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“What is it about tea that attracts you?” she asked. “Its taste evokes memories,” he said. “The feeling of something familiar that you’ve already experienced but not yet tasted.” Even”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“<spoiler>
Afterward, he would leave her, and he would go to sleep in his own home. "It's hard to understand," he would tell Lila whenever she would press his gently on the subject, "but with us Arabs, a man can come and go, and his wife will not say a word. She'll notice the length of his absences, but she won't press him or ask for explanations. For his part, so long as he acts modestly and doesn't show off his lover in plain view, then he will not bring shame on his family. /<spoiler></spoiler></spoiler>”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“her eyes brimming with”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“His mother asked, "And when is a marriage successful?" He had the feeling she was about to provide the answer, the very answer that people the world over were searching for. And he was right. "When the wife loves the husband," Nadira told him. "Not just loves him, but is crazy about him! Only then.”
― Anat Talshir

“In the passing months, the base for their impossible love story had been built on the knowledge that beneath them was earth and above them was sky and everything else was in their hands, in the hands of their instinct for survival and their ability to maneuver.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“even if the British royal family sold him jams, they would not contain the hidden sweetness of tea leaves that had been fermented and dried in distant villages. He recalled being told by tea lovers that the singing of the tea pickers served as the fertilizer of choice.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“The difficult can only be tended to with softness.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Nomi asked, “When did you know? When did you know that Lila was the one, and nobody else?” “People always ask themselves that question,” he said as he watched a small child fascinated by the poodle. “Still,” Nomi persisted, as if Elias was in possession of some secret formula. “It was all in the breathing,” he said. “What do you mean?” “When I realized she was in every breath I took,” he said. Nomi tried to understand what he was saying: How many breaths did a person take during the course of a day, maybe a hundred thousand? And she was there in every one? “When you find it, you just know. It’s as simple as that child running after the dog.” Nomi gazed at him without comprehending. “When you forget yourself,” he explained. “When your own wishes shrink. Forgetting yourself is a wonderful feeling, and with Lila, I forgot myself all the time. “Once,” he said, continuing, “we were meeting in Ein Karem. This is when we were already in our fifties. Lila arrived by taxi, and at a traffic light we found ourselves next to each other. When I saw her, I don’t know what happened to me. It was like my chest was bursting, I had to say it. I leaned out my window and said to the driver, ‘Tell her that I love her.’ He did. She blushed like a girl. Then the driver called back to me: ‘She loves the way you love her.’ “With her, I saw everything I did in a wonderful light that was sweet and bright: going to the market, filling the tank with gas, sitting in a movie theater. Whenever we came out of the long narrow hallway they always make you exit cinemas from, I would think that with her I’m forgiving; I always want the heroes of the film to fall in love and overcome their challenges and continue their love story. With her I was prepared to be taken anywhere and everywhere.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“At fifty-one,”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Troubles come uninvited,” the woman said, “but we have to bring happiness ourselves.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“[Our children] walk among us like mirrors, our X-rays. In them we see what we love but also what we'd like to forget about ourselves. Our shortcomings are forever enshrined.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Sometimes rebuffing him was a difficult, but this evening Margo whispered something about the prohibition on sex during the Yom Kippur holiday--as if they were a family of rabbis!--and he gave in and turned on his side. Rejected and repelled, he would fall into his nighttime sleep; in just a few moments she would hear that sound she hated, the heavy breathing that would rise to his nostrils and turn into a saw-like din, and Margo would wonder whether to shake him or let him be. If she awaken him, there was a chance he might start probing all over again; if she let him snore, he would disrupt her thinking, and she would not be able to give herself over to the brilliant idea she had come up with while staring in the mirror.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“that every bodily pain has its source in the soul, every pain is an expression of distress.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“When both partners give, there is no limit. It is a religious experience, an uplifting of the soul.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night