The Dovekeepers Quotes
"We came like doves across the desert. In a time when there was nothing but death, we were grateful for anything, and most grateful of all when we awoke to another day."
"They say the truest beauty is in the harshest land and that God can be found there by those with open eyes."
"All that will ever be has already been written long before it happens."
"The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard."
"What is brutal survives. What is cunning lives until morning."
"I followed my father out of the city because I had no choice."
"I don’t know how it began, but I know how it ended."
"The desire for Jerusalem was a fire that could not be quenched."
"Victims often attack one another, they become chickens in a pen, bickering, frenzied."
"I can remember the instant when I entered the world, the great calm that was suddenly broken."
"I was the second child, a year younger than my brother, but unlike him entirely, cursed by the burden of my first breath."
"I wished for a night without dreams, a world without lions, a year without Av, that bitter, red month."
"We were nomads, leaving behind beds and belongings, rugs and brass pots."
"If you cannot be brutal in the desert, you will never survive."
"My fate was revealed as he tenderly buried those two sister-wives as surely as if the Book of Life had fallen open before me."
"I was thrown together with Sia and her children when I would have preferred to be alone."
"I was not the only one who kept my eyes open."
"I knew from the talk of women at the well in Jerusalem that it was possible to bind a man to you and keep him from straying."
"As a gift marked a beginning, so, too, did it signify an ending."
"We left when the morning was dark and there were hawks spiraling across the sky."
"Something was happening as we said good-bye."
"Mistrust was everywhere, and for good reason."
"I had no idea that he could already read what had been written."
"We dared not visit any oasis for fear the Romans would find us."
"The sea appeared to be so close I imagined I could reach out and touch it."
"Even for the righteous, it is only up to Adonai to punish."
"What belonged to one man also belonged to his neighbor."
"You cannot take any of it into the house of the Lord."
"We heard the lamentations that a woman was meant to sing because I would not allow those words into my mouth."
"I was a lioness without claws or teeth."
"He could throw a knife from a great distance and strike a man dead."
"The fortress before me was like a dream, and like a dreamer I went forth."
"Every betrayer knows his fate is to have the misery he once doled out to others returned to him in kind."
"I wondered if in his illness Ben Simon had been like the lion who had fought so hard against nine warriors, only to lay down his head and die before the tenth."
"Perhaps the goat had come to teach me how to survive in a land so harsh it seemed impossible to do so."
"A witch was only a woman, but the daughter Aziza was something even worse. She was one of the sheydim. Half human, half angel, a combination that formed a demon."
"They could see the future in a cup of water and turn the pages of the Book of Life to view the names that were inscribed within."
"I knew that the Angel of Death was never announced. He came in silence and left in sorrow."
"The women in the bath vowed that Aziza’s father was an angel sent to earth to teach sorcery to those evil women who yearned to know such secrets."
"I saw a figure in the dark that seemed to resemble an angel, moving the way angels are said to do, in the corners of our sight."
"The highest of our priests, usually cloistered inside the synagogue, where he studied and gave advice, now came to stand upon the wall and lead the men in prayer."
"I had seen her shoveling out the nests in the dovecotes until her hands were bleeding. It was hardly suitable work for an angel, any more than it was a calling for a witch."
"My father sat outside our chamber on a bench he had built as the dark sifted down, his cloak draped around his shoulders."
"The women at the looms spoke of our leader, who was our hero and our only hope."
"I had often spied worry spreading across Shirah’s striking, fine-boned face. Try as she might to keep him a child, Shirah’s son was already straining to be a man."
"I cried myself to sleep and awoke early after an unsettled night."
"Levi led me to the wall that overlooked the white cliffs which stretched on as far as we could see."
"I understood what my grandson was telling me in bringing me to see the beauty of their flight."
"Blessed is He who spoke, and the world came into being."
"Here my son-in-law is called the Man from the Valley; he needs no more of a name than that."
"The wise men and rabbis bowed to the legion, accepting taxes so high we could barely survive."
"I raised my chin, ready to push past him, not willing to listen."
"Nothing in this world is lasting, only our faith lives on."
"Each morning when I arrive, the doves know me; their song rises and falls with pleasure and acceptance."
"We were like rats, scurrying away before the flood of death overtook us."
"Being human means losing everything we love best in the world."
"Is what we see on this earth all there is? You understand there is a shadow world."
"It's hard to say no to a face like his."
"If you want to look at someone’s hand for the mark of death, search hers."
"We who had already sinned did not question or condemn."
"If I had learned anything from my time in the desert it was that once you ran, you could never stop."
"Perhaps if the cure lasted longer, Channa would not ask for more."
"A woman who practiced keshaphim was not an easy enemy to face."
"The least I can do is bring food and water, and see if I might heal his wounds."
"Bring him if you must. But whatever you do, do not let her hold him."
"Perhaps he resented me, for I had performed the deed of vengeance he was likely ashamed not to have committed himself."
"I’ll arrive one morning and you’ll be gone."
"I could not promise him that God’s grace would prevail."
"Seed must be set down during times of rain so it would be trapped in the earth rather than dry up and shrivel before it could take root."
"The drought became a hammer, and our people’s thirst was a nail beneath that hammer."
"Nothing had changed. We had no choice but to wait for God to see our plight."
"The olives grew white then dropped from the trees, clattering onto the stones."
"We covered our table at the Sabbath with the fabric when we lit our lamp and said the Sabbath prayers."
"Where another might have seen only darkness, I noticed the shadow of Ben Ya’ir’s wife, watching."
"If I could see what was between them, surely Channa could as well."
"She ran so fast that her shadow was left behind."
"In that instant, as her shadow fastened itself to her flesh, I realized that Channa was the sort of woman who was willing to do anything to keep her husband."
"A child was the one ingredient that could bind a man to a woman in ways only the angels could understand."
"The world became wet and luminous, brimming with sheets of water."
"Silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer up to heaven."
"I listened to the wind that had risen in the desert to follow us here."
"You are my armor and my sword, my faith and my treasure, everything I’m fighting for."
"I took your death and your life into myself."
"We made camp in the mountains, above the pass that overlooked the King’s Road from Damascus."
"Our mother carried her small woven bag of belongings."
"The only thing that grew on this side of the Salt Sea was the Jericho balsam."
"I often dreamed of that other time, though I told no one, not even Amram, to whom I have pledged myself."
"I stayed in our chamber when she went to assist women in their labor."
"The Essenes were immobilized, as a mouse stands motionless before a black viper."
"The child my mother had labored to bring into this world was gone to her now."
"For some secrets bring you closer in their sharing, just as others break you apart."
"He who is without a fear of death is the most dangerous man of all."
"You shouldn’t have let her touch him. Now she has him in her claws."
"I have placed the Lord constantly before me."
"The world was there before me, in the cliffs and the valley below, but this world no longer belonged to me."
"You don't fight for peace, sister. You embrace it."
"A shadow in a dark tunic, hunched down as though she might evade us as easily as dusk fading into a field of blackened trees."
"Perhaps he thought he had a second chance to forge another warrior."
"What we believed in, and what we said aloud, we could create before His eyes and in His image."
"His flesh was covered with scars, many untended and unhealed."