When I write a word in English, a simple one, such as, say, 'chief,' I have unwittingly ushered a querulous horde into the room. The Roman legionary is there, shaking his 'cap,' or head, and Al Cap is there, slouching in his signature working man's headgear.

Geraldine Brooks

Categorized in : Men Writing Simple

A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.

Geraldine Brooks

mind book hands

There are always a few who stand up in times of communal madness and have the courage to say that what unites us is greater than what divides us.

Geraldine Brooks

divides madness greater

To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.

Geraldine Brooks

mind attitude men

She was like a butterfly, full of color and vibrancy when she chose to open her wings, yet hardly visible when she closed them.

Geraldine Brooks

butterfly color wings

Certainly I'm still mining my experiences as a journalist. I think it's no coincidence that all three of my novels basically are about how people act in a time of catastrophe. Do they go to their best self or their worst self?

Geraldine Brooks

self people thinking

You go on. You set one foot in front of the other, and if a thin voice cries out, somewhere behind you, you pretend not to hear, and keep going.

Geraldine Brooks

persistence perseverance voice

We were too intelligent, too cynical for war. Of course, you don't have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death.

Geraldine Brooks

intelligent stupid war

Instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence.

Geraldine Brooks

independence vanity girl

I think probably the scaredest I've ever been was in Somalia. I arrived there when the episode that became known as 'Black Hawk Down' was still taking place. The Americans were still pinned down under fire. And everybody else was basically going the other way, and I was the only one putting my hand up for a flight in.

Geraldine Brooks

fire hands thinking

The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

Geraldine Brooks

historical imagination fiction

The great thing about being always among people of noble manners was the inevitable elevation of one's own.

Geraldine Brooks

noble manners people

The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads.

Geraldine Brooks

real hero moving

I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.

Geraldine Brooks

atheist blessing thinking

Who is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.

Geraldine Brooks

imagination fear men

If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.

Geraldine Brooks

doubt class men

If a man is to lose his fortune, it is a good thing if he were poor before he acquired it, for poverty requires aptitude.

Geraldine Brooks

aptitude poverty men

It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy.

Geraldine Brooks

writing country past

Write what you know. Every guide for the aspiring author advises this. Because I live in a long-settled rural place, I know certain things. I know the feel of a newborn lamb's damp, tight-curled fleece and the sharp sound a well-bucket chain makes as it scrapes on stone. But more than these material things, I know the feelings that flourish in small communities. And I know other kinds of emotional truths that I believe apply across the centuries.

Geraldine Brooks

emotional writing believe

Despair is a cavern beneath our feet and we teeter on its very brink.

Geraldine Brooks

caverns despair feet

Yes, it seems we've got this mutant gene in our human personality that makes us susceptible to this same kind of mistake over and over again. It's really uncanny how we build these beautiful multicultural edifices and then allow this switch to be flipped and everybody goes, 'Oh, the other, get them out of here.

Geraldine Brooks

personality mistake beautiful