Disobedience

by Naomi Alderman

“If the created world were a piece of music, speech would be its refrain, its recurring theme.

Our words are, in a sense, real. They can create worlds and destroy them. They have edges, like a knife.”

And when I got back, after dark, I realized, of course, that it was Friday night, which is never a good thing to realize.

You need that disagreement, we all do, so that we can realize that the world isn’t smooth and even, not everyone agrees with everyone else. You need a window into another world to work out what you think of your own.

the idea of making it how I knew he liked it seemed so intensely personal that I thought I’d rather open a vein and bleed into the cup.

In any case, how else were they to communicate? She cooked and he ate—this, too, was a form of speech.

Scott once said to me that you belong in three places: the place you grew up, the place where you went to college, and the place where the person you love is.

Time, which is a circle, which will always return us to our starting points, has returned her to me.

Loving Ronit seemed, already, to demand some denial of herself. Or perhaps, she reflected later, all love demands that.

The moon was absent, a circle of darkness denoting the possibility of presence, the inevitability of return.

“Do you think that you are the stars, perhaps? And that I am the moon? I thought you were the moon. But I have been absent, too, you know. I think I have been absent all this time.”

Like she wanted to be taught how to quit.

And whatever God may think of me, He thinks already.”

To answer this question, we must first understand that this world exists to teach us.

What, then, does marriage teach us? It teaches us to strive for closeness. That intimacy cannot be attained or retained without effort.

For in trying to approach more closely to a human being who is so different to us, we begin to understand the task before us in approaching the Almighty.

It is a terrible, wretched thing to love someone whom you know cannot love you. There are things that are more dreadful. There are many human pains more grievous. And yet it remains both terrible and wretched. Like so many things, it is insoluble.

our words will swallow us.

We have spat them out, but in the end they will drown us.

She had the look of someone who might wait forever.

Silence is the means by which the weak remain weak and the strong remain strong. Silence is a method of oppression.

Each tick seemed like a word uttered into the quiet of the house, a spoken thing created and then dropped to fall back into the ocean of silence.

Shabbat is simply to take our hands from the wheel and let it spin.

I remember learning in school later that human beings are electric animals, flowing with current, and thinking, I know, I have already learned this fact of electricity within the skin. I remember only in moments.

Happiness is not the same as comfort; it is not necessarily to be found in ease, in luxury and plenty. Ease, luxury, and plenty are not shameful, but they are not happiness. Too much comfort can, in fact, cause weakening of the body, depression of the spirit, and despair of the soul. We human beings, like the Lord Almighty Who created us, yearn to build. Our happiness, in this world at least, is to be found in creation.

Happiness is not a sensation of ease and comfort. Happiness is the deeper satisfaction we find when we create: when we construct a physical object, or compose a work of art, or raise a child. We experience happiness when we have touched the world and left it different, according to our will. We experience the greatest happiness when we have touched the world and left it better, according to the Will of the Almighty.

this place kills women, it bleeds them dry.

We hang suspended between two certainties: the clarity of the angels and the desires of the beasts. Thus, we remain forever uncertain. Our lives present us with choices, further choices and more choices, each multiplying, our ability to find our way forever in doubt. Unhappy creatures! Luckiest of all beings! Our triumph is our downfall, our opportunity for condemnation is also our chance for greatness. And all we have, in the end, are the choices we make.

“It has always been this way with me. No other way. I think I will never be any different than this.”

A new way of thinking, not dominated by silence.

All things, when measured in spans of years, seem simple. But human lives do not occur in years but slowly, day by day. A year may be easy, but its days are hard indeed.

no parent can give his child everything she needs.

Because while you don’t have a choice about what you are, you have a choice about what you show.