My sentences tend to be very short and rather spare. I'm more your paragraph kind of gal. Geraldine Brooks More Quotes by Geraldine Brooks More Quotes From Geraldine Brooks Even the classics that we read to our young children are full of wolves' fangs and burning ovens and bloody feet and ice shards piercing hearts. Even the New Testament climaxes with an act of unspeakable torture. Might as well just read to our kids from the Amnesty Annual Report and be done with it. Geraldine Brooks heart kids children Both my mum and dad were great readers, and we would go every Saturday morning to the library, and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature, and all of us would come with an armful of books. Geraldine Brooks dad morning book Because I worked as a newspaper reporter for about 14 years before attempting my first novel, I learned to write under almost any circumstances- by candle light, in longhand, in African villages where there was no power, under shelling in Kurdistan. Geraldine Brooks light writing years And when I'd be reporting in Israel, Palestinians would say, the Jews they're not like us, and the Jews would say the same things about the Palestinians, they don't want what we want. And I never bought it as a reporter and I don't buy it as a novelist. I think, you know, the sound of somebody crying for their lost child sounds the same. Geraldine Brooks israel children thinking And one of the things that I learned was you can't generalise at all about a woman in a veil. You can't think you know her story, because she will confound you over and over again. She may be an engineer or a diplomat or a doctor. Or she may be an unbelievable babe with bleached hair down to her waist. Geraldine Brooks doctors hair thinking The Sarajevans have a very particular world view - a mordant wit coupled with this unbearable sadness and... truckloads of guts, you know. Geraldine Brooks sadness views world I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with. Geraldine Brooks pages writing sometimes September 11, 2001, revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage. Geraldine Brooks heroism september-11 people My mother's family were full-on Irish Catholics - faith in an elaborate old fashioned, highly conservative and madly baroque style. I sort of fell out of the tribe over women's rights and social justice issues when I was just 13 years old. Geraldine Brooks rights mother years We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures. Geraldine Brooks elephants dog animal Moral certainty can deafen people to any truth other than their own. Geraldine Brooks moral certainty people I think that you can honour the sacrifices of a common soldier without glorifying war. Geraldine Brooks sacrifice war thinking I do believe that our modern English usage has become way too clipped and austere. I have been reading excerpts from the journals of 18th-century seafarers lately, and even the lowliest press-ganged deck-swabber turns a finer phrase than I do most days. Geraldine Brooks phrases reading believe I had been afraid of breast cancer, as I suspect most women are, from the time I hit adolescence. At that age, when our emerging sexuality is our central preoccupation, the idea of disfigurement of a breast is particularly horrifying. Geraldine Brooks cancer age ideas Both my parents loved words. That was the big deal in our house. Geraldine Brooks bigs parent house ...The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox. p. 361 Geraldine Brooks catholic tests people God warns us not to love any earthly thing above Himself, and yet He sets in a mother's heart such a fierce passion for her babes that I do not comprehend how He can test us so. Geraldine Brooks passion mother heart 'You've got mail!' exclaims the cheery automaton at America Online. The flag on the mailbox icon waves invitingly on my computer screen. For a second, I'm 10 years old again, waiting for the postman's whistle to slice the stillness of an Australian afternoon. Geraldine Brooks icons america years While I love to read contemporary fiction, I'm not drawn to writing it. Perhaps it's because the former journalist in me is too inhibited by the press of reality; when I think about writing of my own time I always think about nonfiction narratives. Or perhaps it's just that I find the present too confounding. Geraldine Brooks writing reality thinking I was really interested in how marriages work, how you can, you know, be in love with somebody and spend many years with your lives intertwined, but in the end another soul can be fundamentally unknowable. And I think that the stress of war, when one party goes away and the other has to deal at home, is a really testing time in a lot of marriages. Geraldine Brooks stress party war
