The Tenth Gift Quotes

“Somewhere a bird sang, its chant hanging plaintive and melancholy in the still air...I think it's a sort of lark or something. Our tradition has it that they sing with the voices of lost lovers. If the stars are smiling on them, you will hear its mate call back in a moment.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“There are days when I think there really is some huge great tapestry of a plan out there and we're all woven into it - this fabulous, complex pattern of life and death, full of recurring motifs and waves of color, and we're each one tiny thread in the weave.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Cat wrinkled her nose. "No, thank you."
"Take," the rais told her. "Is good." He picked one up and held it out, and when she hesitated, thrust it at her with greater insistence. "With my people, hosbitality important. To refuse is insult."
She took a small bite. Sweetness flooded her mouth so that she gasped. It was not in the least what she had expected, for it tasted remarkably like the preserved medlars the cook bottled each autumn from Kenegie's orchard. "Oh..." She took the rest whole, saliva breaking from the corner of her mouth.
Al-Andalusi looked on, eyebrow cocked sardonically. "Is fig," he said. "In some tradition it was the friut Eve gave to Adam from the Tree of Knowledge."
"In the Bible that was an apple!"
"In our tradition, according to the Qu'ran, it was apple also. And when Adam swallowed mouthful od fruit, it stuk in throat and made lump all men have."
"The Adam's apple!" Cat cried, astonished. "We call it that as well."
"We are, perhaps, not such strangers to each other as you think.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Embroidery is an improbable hobby for someone as disordered as me, but it's the very precision of it that attracts me, the illusion of control it offers. When engaged in stitching a new pattern, I can't think about anything else. Guilt, misery, longing all flee away, leaving just the beautiful little microcosm of the world in my hands, the flash of the needle, the rainbow colors of the thread, the calming exactitude of the discipline.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“discovered in herself a still, quiet center she had never suspected to exist.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“long and prosper”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Why are men ever at war? For power and greed and to enforce their own views on others.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Our culture prides itself on the quality of our hospitality and courtesy. And of course we are entitled to demand that the tongue be cut out of anyone who impugns our honor, or that of any member of our family.” The flicker of his smile did not reach his eyes.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Ah, Constantinople, I would so love to visit Constantinople, to see its domes and minarets, to walk inside the Sancta Sophia and breathe the ancient air of Byzantium—”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Morocco: to its warmth and generosity, its exoticism, and its crumbling, pungent, ever-present history.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“For decades, Europe and America have been selling arms, both officially and on the black market, to the very people you now label ‘terrorists.’ War and business, always they go hand in hand—it's realpolitik. Nothing ever really changes, human nature is what it is.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“But for us, sugar is more than just a sweetener: It's a symbol of hospitality, of good luck and happiness.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“The lamb melted on my tongue, and when I swallowed, it left little fireworks in its wake, a burst of citrus and chili and garlic and what seemed a dozen more subtle tastes as well.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Anna's cottage was lime-washed and had shutters of a pretty, faded blue.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“None of us were perfect, and life made us infinitely less so. Tears”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“superstitions of a long Cornish ancestry, had touched wood (but only without legs, for fear your luck would walk away from you),”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Everyone knew that women had not the capacity for abstract thought; in this, as in so much, men dictated and women followed.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“The Berbers have a saying: that God gave the world ten gifts, and that the tenth of those gifts is books…”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift