121 Quotes by Anne Michaels

Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.

Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.

When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.

Any given moment—no matter how casual, how ordinary—is poised, full of gaping life.

Misty is the color of rain on a window.

Somewhere there is a man who is not afraid to live in a woman's hope

Somewhere a man answers courage with courage

...when we say we're looking for a spiritual adviser, we're really looking for someone to tell us what to do with our bodies. Decisions of the flesh. We forget to learn from pleasure as well as pain.

Perhaps we painted on our own skin, with ochre and charcoal, long before we painted on stone.