The Beginning of Desire Quotes

“The Bible is familiar, life is strange. We bring the two together, to shed light on life.”
― Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

“Without contraries there is no progression” (Blake)—”
― Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

“We invent for ourselves the major part of experience,” Nietzsche says in Beyond Good and Evil.”
― Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

“An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing.…”
― Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

“what we call the world is a product of some mind whose symbolic procedures construct the world.”71”
― Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

“God created him first with two faces, and separated them” (1:27).”
― Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

“One might say that the difficulty in rearing children has to do with the ambiguities of independence. The child must separate from the parents; the parent must allow the child to discover his or her own reality. Where there was one, there must be two. But this separation, though necessary, is a complex and often tormented experience. The relationship between separation and loving attachment has to be negotiated each time afresh... There is no theory that can totally guide the parent...In the act of creation, there is perhaps inevitable sadness…”
― Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

“One might say that the difficulty in rearing children has to do with the ambiguities of independence. The child must separate from the parents; the parent must allow the child to discover his or her own reality. Where there was one, there must be two. But this separation, though necessary, is a complex and often tormented experience. The relationship between separation and loving attachment has to be negotiated each time afresh... There is no theory that can totally guide the parent...In the act of creation, there is perhaps inevitable sadness…(p.20)”
― Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis