Anita Diamant > Quotes

“If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate unfinished business. The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter.”
― Anita Diamant, THE RED TENT.

“The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“I wanted to cry, but I realized that I was too old for that. I would be a woman soon and I would have to learn how to live with a divided heart.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“I could not get my fill of looking.
There should be a song for women to sing at this moment or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“They sang the words in unison, yet somehow created a web of sounds with their voices. It was like hearing a piece of fabric woven with all the colors of a rainbow. I did not know that such beauty could be formed by the human mouth. I had never heard harmony before.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“I moved my arms through the water, feeling them float on the surface, watching the waves and wake that followed my gesture. Here was magic, I thought. Here was something holy. ”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“If you want to understand any woman, you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. ”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“He was golden and beautiful as a sunset.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“In Egypt, I loved the perfume of the lotus. A flower would bloom in the pool at dawn, filling the entire garden with a blue musk so powerful it seemed that even the fish and ducks would swoon. By night, the flower might wither but the perfume lasted. Fainter and fainter, but never quite gone. Even many days later, the lotus remained in the garden. Months would pass and a bee would alight near the spot where the lotus had blossomed, and its essence was released again, momentary but undeniable.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Of all life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“I am so honored to be the vessel into which you pour this story of pain and strength.”
― Anita Diamant

“One of my great secrets was knowing I had the power to make her smile.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. Of all life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Wherever you walk, I go with you. Selah.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“5. My husband's words found their mark, and I recalled something that Zilpah had told me when I was a child in the red tent, and far too young to understand her meaning. “We are all born of the same mother,” she said. After a lifetime, I knew that to be true.
”
― Anita Diamant

“One of his tears fell in my mouth, where it became a blue sapphire, source of strength, source of strength and eternal hope.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“The other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“The story it told was unremarkable: a tale of love found and lost- the oldest story in the world. The only story.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“In the moment before I crossed over, I knew that the priests and magicians of Egypt were fools and charlatans for promising to prolong the beauties of life beyond the world we are give. Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. All of life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.”
― Anita Diamant

“Weeping is terrible for the complexion" said Leonie, holding Shayndel close, "but it is very good for the soul.”
― Anita Diamant, Day After Night

“The great mother whom we call Innana gave a gift to woman that is not known among men, and this is the secret of blood. The flow at the dark of the moon, the healing blood of the moon’s birth - to men, this is flux and distemper, bother and pain. They imagine we suffer and consider themselves lucky. We do not disabuse them.

In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month’s death, preparing the body to receive the new month’s life, women give thanks — for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“The more a daughter knows the details of her mother's life-without flinching or whining-the stronger the daughter.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Sometimes luck was just another word for creation, which was as relentless as destruction.”
― Anita Diamant, Day After Night

“My heart is a ladle of sweet water brimming over.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“on the day that the intlligence and talents of women are fully honored and employed, the human community and the planet itself will benefit in ways we can only begin to imagine.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“I had Benia's hands, Meryt's friendship, the feel of newborn flesh, the smiles of new mothers, a little girl who laughed in my kitchen, a house of my own. It was more than enough.”
― Anita Diamant

“One night, alone in her Dogtown bed, Judy finally admitted to herself that she had been in love with Cornelius. "In love" precisely as it was described in the novels and poems she had read with Martha; love as a kind of sweet madness that colored everything. Judy had been shocked that strangers across the ocean could describe the workings of her Yankee heart: the preoccupation and yearning, the soaring happiness and keen appreciation of a man's hidden qualities, the sublime meeting of souls. And yet, there was never a mention of the sort of union she'd shared with Cornelius, the longing and fulfillment of the flesh, that could transform two bodies into one.”
― Anita Diamant, The Last Days of Dogtown

“Egypt loved the lotus becuase it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved. Thus can something as insignificant as a name-two syllables, one high, one sweet- summon up the innumerable smiles, tears, sighs and dreams of a human life.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“The hills in the distance held my life in a bowl filled with everything I could possibly want.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“Egypt loved the lotus because it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“I pray I die before they day comes when I do not know if my sons are infants or grandfathers.”
― Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“you got a sad story, ruth,' mimba said. 'but not sad-sad. you here with me and cato and all us together now. you have a happy-sad story. best you can get in this life is happy-sad. but you always gotta remember your own mama that birthed you. even though you only got a crumb of her story, you still got to say her name out loud. you always honor your dead, else you get trouble from them, sure.”
― Anita Diamant, The Last Days of Dogtown