About the Night Quotes

“Lila realized that looking after the girl dispelled any fears of her own, which is how people who have to save their children must feel. When you are looking after someone, your own fear shrinks. The”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“The wife carries the burden of the marriage on her shoulders,” his mother said. “Her husband, herself, both of them, their covenant, and everything else that gets added over the years. And all that is very, very heavy. It is in her power to keep the marriage alive and thriving, but also to drive it to the brink of crisis and back again. For whatever reason, men have not taken this role upon themselves. Perhaps they are not capable. Now, as you know, every empty space, every abyss created in nature fills itself, and this one is filled by women out of a sense of responsibility and maybe also the will to control. It’s a simple matter, really, but in case you haven’t understood, I’ll explain it: your wife must be happy, satisfied, fulfilled, and impassioned, and then the burden of marriage will not be heavy for her. She’ll be prepared to take it upon herself for better and for worse until the very day that one of you shuts your eyes for good.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“He did not like perfumed women. He was, after all, a man of hints, of mere suggestions of aromas, something that reaches the nose, then slips away at once, returning and disappearing with each light breeze. He kept his distance from smells that forced themselves on him, proclaiming their presence. He was intrigued by scents that made him search after them, preferring the concealed and the veiled to the pronounced and prominent.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“With her, he noticed, even the quiet moments were surprising in their fullness. In the silences, there was beauty, and mellowness; there was no rush to get anywhere. Things that were said were absorbed by the skin, not lost to the air. Something about her allowed him to be calm. Normally, he was restless, impatient with stragglers, quick to think and quick to act. But with her, everything was natural, as if they had been together forever and their presence created a peace that sufficed them both, passing from one to the other, back and forth.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“At fifty-one,”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“even if the British royal family sold him jams, they would not contain the hidden sweetness of tea leaves that had been fermented and dried in distant villages. He recalled being told by tea lovers that the singing of the tea pickers served as the fertilizer of choice.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Troubles come uninvited,” the woman said, “but we have to bring happiness ourselves.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Elias showed her that in the withered bodies of the aged, there was a whole world, the memory of love and accrued wisdom and acceptance of things to come.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“One must always cast doubts,” George said. “Doubt armies, doubt megalomania; nothing is absolute. Nothing, that is, but the solar system and the stars and the fact that day follows night and night follows day.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“We are whole and perfect together, not in the sense of being blemish-free but like an old tree that has been there forever. People speak of happiness? Well, we got there and passed right through to the other side.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“The difficult can only be tended to with softness.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Another thought occurred to her as well: that if you let the top layers fall, there is a chance that the bottom layers will hold fast. Thus, she imagined that she might remove one layer of her own grief, and then another.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“At that moment he understood something with great clarity: that sacrifice exacted its price systematically, slowly, over the years and, like a crime syndicate, never forgot its due. Such sacrifice led to bitterness, and the bitterness in turn led to physical and mental pains, to chronic fatigue, to a fading away of one’s spirit, to a growing deficiency of the life sap that others possessed but which he did not. In his darker moments, which had increased with the years, he was overcome with fury at what had been decreed for his life.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Why does he run away?” Munir asked. “He feels that no one really wants him,” Nomi said. “He runs away so that he won’t need anyone. When nobody wants you, you make yourself disappear. That way, you gain control, in a sense. It’s like he’s saying, ‘You want to get rid of me. Well, I’ll get rid of you first. I’ll show you.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“When both partners give, there is no limit. It is a religious experience, an uplifting of the soul.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“I’ll always remain a Jew,” Lila had said, unbending. “Yes,” he said. “You have what’s yours and I have what’s mine, and nothing will be stamped out. But our relationship creates a new religion, our own.” “My parents brought me up to believe that I am a descendant of the chosen people,” she told him. “And you needn’t change that,” he said. “But try to find what we have in common, not what’s different between us. You’re a patriot, and I respect you for that. But we’ve found something that is ours and isn’t dependent on any other idea.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“that every bodily pain has its source in the soul, every pain is an expression of distress.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Thousands of years ago,” he told her, as if sharing a secret, “a Chinaman went out to be alone in nature. He gathered some herbs, tested them on himself, mixed and concocted and poisoned himself seventy times, since every medicinal plant is also a poison depending on how it is used. That day he was boiling water for himself over a fire built on sticks. A breeze blew leaves from a nearby hill and some of them fell into the boiling water. And that is how, according to the legend, the world’s first cup of tea was born.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“She forgot his name, or maybe she had not learned it, but his clever brown eyes and his strong but delicate hands and his bronzed skin and the warm timbre of his voice were etching themselves onto her.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“He had not been prepared for that. It was not only what she had said but also the way her lips moved when she said it. He had no idea that it would catch him in the belly. A slight tremor, unfamiliar and uncontrollable, spread from deep inside him. Her voice, her beauty, the lemony scent that rose from her. He wished to say to her, “Your lips are beautiful when you speak,” but instead, he remained silent.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“When you’re old,” he said sagely, “you don’t stop laughing, but when you stop laughing, you grow old. Lila and I laughed a lot,” he continued. “Sometimes we laughed so hard we choked. We didn’t have enough air. When she died, I found myself laughing less and less. That’s when I grew old. Now there’s no more laughter in my life.” “Do”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Nomi asked, “When did you know? When did you know that Lila was the one, and nobody else?” “People always ask themselves that question,” he said as he watched a small child fascinated by the poodle. “Still,” Nomi persisted, as if Elias was in possession of some secret formula. “It was all in the breathing,” he said. “What do you mean?” “When I realized she was in every breath I took,” he said. Nomi tried to understand what he was saying: How many breaths did a person take during the course of a day, maybe a hundred thousand? And she was there in every one? “When you find it, you just know. It’s as simple as that child running after the dog.” Nomi gazed at him without comprehending. “When you forget yourself,” he explained. “When your own wishes shrink. Forgetting yourself is a wonderful feeling, and with Lila, I forgot myself all the time. “Once,” he said, continuing, “we were meeting in Ein Karem. This is when we were already in our fifties. Lila arrived by taxi, and at a traffic light we found ourselves next to each other. When I saw her, I don’t know what happened to me. It was like my chest was bursting, I had to say it. I leaned out my window and said to the driver, ‘Tell her that I love her.’ He did. She blushed like a girl. Then the driver called back to me: ‘She loves the way you love her.’ “With her, I saw everything I did in a wonderful light that was sweet and bright: going to the market, filling the tank with gas, sitting in a movie theater. Whenever we came out of the long narrow hallway they always make you exit cinemas from, I would think that with her I’m forgiving; I always want the heroes of the film to fall in love and overcome their challenges and continue their love story. With her I was prepared to be taken anywhere and everywhere.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“When nobody wants you, you make yourself disappear.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“It doesn't matter how old you are," Lila said. "What matters is how you live.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“In the passing months, the base for their impossible love story had been built on the knowledge that beneath them was earth and above them was sky and everything else was in their hands, in the hands of their instinct for survival and their ability to maneuver.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“When big things happen," he hold her, "time flows differently. For instance, who says the world was created in six days? Maybe a day was like sixty years. Or even a thousand of a million, like it says in Psalms: For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“her eyes brimming with”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“Hadassah Hospital. She worked on Herschlag in his bed, a towel around his neck, while Nomi held a mirror, a tiny compact, for him to see, according to his wishes. “I can’t stand the prickly little hairs,” Elias said. “I need to take a shower.” The Songstress of Abu Dis, who had not hurried back to the nurse’s station, offered to accompany Elias to the shower. But he refused, and Nomi noticed the resentment in his eyes. “That’s his pride,” the nurse explained to Nomi while Elias showered. “He won’t let anyone bathe him. Doesn’t matter if it takes him an hour, he’ll do it himself. Don’t lock the door!” she shouted amicably. They heard the click of the lock, and Nomi smiled at her. The nurse returned a knowing smile. “He’s a prince,” she said before she went back to her work. “Not bad for a last haircut,” Elias said as he emerged from the shower. Herschlag smiled at the two women in the room. “Ne’iman,” Nomi said, using the Arabic blessing for someone who has bathed. His eyes filled with softness and warmth. Katy returned from the canteen and snuck four bottles of beer into the room, a look of mischief on her face. Elias and Herschlag”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“He was charming, but he did not slather his charm around in great quantities. He merely drizzled it.”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night

“What is it about tea that attracts you?” she asked. “Its taste evokes memories,” he said. “The feeling of something familiar that you’ve already experienced but not yet tasted.” Even”
― Anat Talshir, About the Night