Disobedience Quotes

“Silence is not power. It’s not strength. Silence is the means by which the weak remain weak and the strong remain strong. Silence is a method of oppression.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“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.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“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.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“And all we have, in the end, are the choices we make.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“You can’t solve anyone else’s life for them. But then, if you see someone struggling with a heavy load, isn’t it forbidden to walk on without helping them?”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“Sometimes I think that God is punishing me. For what we did together. Sometimes I think that my life is a punishment for wanting. And the wanting is a punishment, too.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“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.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“A year may be easy, but its days are hard indeed.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“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. I’d add a fourth component to that: the place where you first sought professional psychological help.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“because, honestly, which of us really understands why we do the things we do?”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“no true knowledge is ever reached without pain.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“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.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“But it’s more complicated than you think, how you feel about a person. Sometimes I think that if she’d asked me, even once, to stay, I would have stayed forever. The Rabbis teach that we each hold worlds within us. Maybe both these things are true. But she never asked. And so I had to leave.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“Because while you don’t have a choice about what you are, you have a
choice about what you show. You always have a choice about whether you “out” yourself. Every time you meet someone new, it’s a decision. You always have a choice about whether you practice. Practice, of course, means a lot of different things. Probably something different to everyone. You can practice every day, or just once in a while. But if you don’t ever practice, you’ll never know what it could have meant to you. You’ll never know who you might have been. If you don’t practice, you’ll probably even feel awkward claiming that identity: if it has no function in your life, what’s the point of saying it? It’s still there, of course. It’ll never go away. But if you don’t practice, it can never change your life. Honestly, with the world the way it is, it’s probably easier not to practice. You’ll fit in better. If that’s what you want. Me, though, I’ve never been that interested in fitting in.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“There was a time when Esti thought that Ronit’s face contained the world, but now, well, it’s just a face. She’s grateful for that, grateful for the change, because it’s not good to see the world in a face that doesn’t belong to you, that’s always turning away from you.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“The point of which is—it is technically possible to check in to, say, a transatlantic flight, check your bags, go through passport control, wave good-bye to your loved ones (or loathed ones, whichever is more applicable in your particular circumstances), and yet nonetheless somehow not leave when the plane does. You just have to be really motivated.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“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.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“We who live in Hendon now like to imagine ourselves elsewhere. We carry our homeland on our backs, unpacking it where we find ourselves., never too thoroughly nor too well, for we will have to pack it up again one day. Hendon does not exist; it is only where we are, which is the least of all ways to describe us.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“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.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“We are not ruled by blind instinct like the beasts. Uniquely, we can listen to the commands of God, can understand them, yet can choose disobedience. It is this, and only this, which gives our obedience its value.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“Dovid thought: our words will swallow us. We have spat them out, but in the end they will drown us.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“I think I will never be any different than this”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“I’d forgotten it was these people I was coming back to: these views, that synagogue full of small, cramped minds, grown twisted through lack of sunlight.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“We are modern. We live modern lives. All we demand is that women keep to their allotted areas; a woman is private, while a man is public. The correct mode for a man is speech, while the correct mode for a woman is silence. I’ve spent a long time proving that this isn’t so. I’ve spent a long time insisting that no one else can tell me when to speak and when to remain silent. So much so that it’s hard for me to tell when I want to be quiet.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“I was four years old when my mother died. It’s young enough that I might never think of her. Old enough that the knowledge would always be with me. And I don’t. And it is.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“We did not go out of each other’s lives in a blaze of anger. We simply fell out of the habit of speaking. We lost our common language and so lost everything. There was nothing for us to say.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“And there was a throbbing in my head, a kind of pressure from the inside, and I found that I was shouting. I can’t remember everything I said. I know it wasn’t all about egg sandwiches. I remember that I said, “It’s no wonder that I hate you so much, because you never listen!” I remember that I said, “I wish I were dead like my mother!”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“He could not hope to discover, let alone understand, what thoughts moved her as she sat holding his hand to her cheek. He was alone, in the smallness of the room, in the space within him. And yet they were both together, alone. He understood, as if the knowledge had been waiting for him in this windowless chamber. That was, at bottom, what it amounted to. To be alone, together.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“Ease, luxury, and plenty are not shameful, but they are not happiness.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience

“It wasn’t really as though I wanted either of them. I just expected them to be there when I needed them. I just expected that they’d stay where I put them, wouldn’t cause trouble. They were both so obedient.”
― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience