96 Quotes by Chloe Benjamin

The periodical cicada hibernates underground in broods, feeding on fluids from tree roots. It would be easy to think them dead; perhaps, in some way – sedentary and silent, nestled two feet below the soil – they are. One night, seventeen years later, they break through the surface in astounding numbers. They climb the nearest vertical object; the husks of their nymphal skins drop crisply to the ground. Their bodies are pale and not yet hardened. In the darkness, they sing.

I suppose I think we need God for the same reason we need art.” “Because it’s nice to look at?” “No.” Mira smiled. “Because it shows us what’s possible.

His death did not point to the failure of the body. It pointed to the power of the human mind, an entirely different adversary-to the fact that thoughts have wings.

Maybe this quietude – these small, daily pleasures – could be enough.

But Varya disagreed. She knew that stories did have the power to change things: the past and the future, even the present. She had been an agnostic since graduate school, but if there was one tenant of Judaism with which she agreed, it was this: the power of words. They weaseled under door cracks and through keyholes. They hooked into individuals and wormed through generations.

Most adults claim not to believe in magic, but Klara knows better. Why else would anyone play at permanence – fall in love, have children, buy a house – in the face of all evidence there’s no such thing?

He believes in bad choices; he believes in bad luck. And yet the memory of the woman on Hester Street is like a miniscule needle in his stomach, something he swallowed long ago and which floats, undetectable, except for moments when he moves a certain way and feels a prick.

By the time she was six, even her own parents were dead. God must have seemed less likely than chance, goodness less likely than evil – so Gertie knocked on wood and crossed fingers, tossed coins into fountains and rice over shoulders. When she prayed, she bargained.

Varya has had enough therapy to know that she’s telling herself stories. She knows her faith – that rituals have power, that thoughts can change outcomes or ward off misfortune – is a magic trick: fiction, perhaps, but necessary for survival. And yet, and yet: Is it a story if you believe it?