Cassidy > Cassidy's Quotes

“What does a person need?' she proclaimed one day after the first spoonful of dessert. 'Not much: something sweet to eat, and a story to tell, and time and space, and gladioluses in a vase, and two friends, and two hilltops, one on which to stand and the other upon which to gaze. And two eyes for watching the heavens and waiting....”
― Meir Shalev, A Pigeon and a Boy

“The mid-nineteenth-century French physiologist Claude Bernard was the first to overturn the conventional understanding that life is an adjustment to environment. Adjustment to the surrounding environment is death, argued Bernard; the phenomenon of life is that of preserving an internal environment contrary to an outside environment”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“He knew that the Jews needed a shelter and that Israel was a shelter. He understood that the Jews needed a roof and that Israel was their only roof. For secular Jews who had no God and no religion, Israel was also essential for their souls and identities. Without a Jewish state, secular Jews like himself would stand naked in the world.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“The two denials are actually four: the denial of the Palestinian past, the denial of the Palestinian disaster, the denial of the Jewish past, and the denial of the Jewish catastrophe. Four forces of amnesia are at work.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“She called it varenye. Varenye, the jar of fruit preserves that Eastern European Jews kept in the cupboard for times of trouble, so if a pogrom broke out they would have something to feed their families until the fury pasted.”
― Ari Shavit

“What a genius. A self-hating Israeli, but still a genius. Unbelievable how many geniuses this country has spawned. Unbelievable what music and literature and poetry this country has created. Here, on the edge of the desert, in the line of death, we have built a nation of talent and joy and endless creativity.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“I am haunted by the notion that we hold them by the balls and they hold us by the throat. We squeeze and they squeeze back. We are trapped by them and they are trapped by us. And every few years the conflict takes on a new form, ever more gruesome. Every few years, the mode of violence changes. The tragedy ends one chapter and begins another, but the tragedy never ends.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Let us today take stock of ourselves.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“They were the ones the State of Israel was meant for and planned for. From the outset we were under suspicion. So we were culturally castrated. We were expected to relinquish what we were previously.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“Israel is a harsh, hot land; ice cream is cold and comforting.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“He asks me what I think of it and then tells me what I should think of it.”
― Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

“The ability to compare, and to evaluate, other human beings was the fountainhead of human unhappiness...”
― Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

“Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed. He”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“Life was not safe and nothing could make it so, neither fashionable dresses nor bank accounts. The baseline of human life was courage.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“Laughter is good for the soul and all your interior works.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“Above and behind them the Dipper turned on its great handle as if to pour night itself out onto the dreaming continent and each of its seven stars gleamed from between the fitful clouds.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“but now the news of the world aged him more than time itself.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“He made a list: feed, flour, ammunition, soap, beef, candles, faith, hope, charity.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“A thin watery sun laid its gunmetal shine on the country below.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“There's nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip through the hinges where you've hung it so careful.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“I have noticed that if you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“The most significant gifts are the ones most easily overlooked. Small, everyday blessings: woods, health, music, laughter, memories, books, family, friends, second chances, warm fireplaces, and all the footprints scattered throughout our days.”
― Sue Monk Kidd

“People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's that hard.”
― Sue Monk Kidd

“Sunset is the saddest light there is.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“You can go other places, all right - you can live on the other side of the world, but you can't ever leave home”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

“The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“It shocks me how I wish for...what is lost and cannot come back.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story