The Jerusalem Quartet (The Jerusalem Quartet #1-4)

by Edward Whittemore

What I mean is, you can’t humiliate someone you’re close to, you can’t do that, because it’s more than we can bear as human beings. We can be defeated forever but we can’t be insulted by someone we love, and the failure to give love when it’s needed, needed, must always be one of our darkest sins.

Deep within us, it seems, we begin life with the false notion that our appearance in the world is of monumental significance, and so we assign universal meanings to the threads and colors of our early lives, assuming them to be a unique tapestry of mysterious import, rather than merely one more shoddy human patchwork in one more tiny corner of the world.

Consider. If I were to meet a person such as my mother today, or even my mother herself as she was when she abandoned me, the ultimate cause of my obsession, would I suddenly find myself in a human presence so powerful, I could imagine it determining a man’s whole life?

Most of us are afraid because someone else is in charge of our lives, and because we’re terrified of failing alone.

But we are what we are, aren’t we? Belle has a head for solid facts and dates and things like that, and I just don’t. When I remember things I think of colors and patterns and impressions.

Innocence is the origin of our sin, said Stern, and our hope as well as our curse.

Tajar had learned that a young man with knowledge beyond his years had a natural appeal to men with more experience, who were also the men with power and influence. Somehow there was a slight psychological shift on the older man’s part, perhaps caused by a sense of flattery.