Helen Maryles Shankman Quotes & Sayings

You can suck the life out of someone without ever touching a drop of their blood.
Raphael Sinclair — Helen Maryles Shankman

What else could I do? You couldn't just say no. I had to think about...my...position. — Helen Maryles Shankman

For decades afterwards, I punished myself with images of Sofia standing
naked in the snow, shivering, clutching a chunk of cement that a guard had told her was soap, in the worst winter Poland has ever known. But as I stared at the empty train tracks and thought of the stationmaster making the schoolyard slash across his throat, I had no idea what he was talking about. I could not have conjured up the kind of man who would be willing to design an oven that would be economically fueled by the fat of the men, women and children it was burning. I would not have believed that these same engineers would find other men willing to carry out their monstrous plans. I, too, would have dismissed it as propaganda, that one kind of human being could industriously collect and kill six million of another kind of human being. Somewhere along the line, there would have to be someone who said no.
Forgive me, Sofia. Forgive me, Isaiah. I did not know. — Helen Maryles Shankman

When your heart breaks, you can actually feel it, an agonizing stab of pain in a muscle that you know for a fact is just a glorified pump. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, the ordered universe changes, the solid ground beneath your feet becomes a slippery rock. The material world that seemed so safe and solid a moment ago becomes a shifting, ghostly place of shadows and mist. Matters that seemed settled and certain a long ago come suddenly unhinged, and you begin to doubt everything you ever knew to be true. — Helen Maryles Shankman

If an ordinary man can be tapped to be the Messiah...then perhaps any one of us is capable of bringing about the Redemption. — Helen Maryles Shankman

You should have noticed by now, sometimes a monster looks just like any other man. — Helen Maryles Shankman

Rest in peace? Please, God, no. Haunt me, Sofia. You said you'd haunt me. — Helen Maryles Shankman

The terrible things that happen to us," Tessa said slowly. "What we
do with them ... I think that's what makes us artists. — Helen Maryles Shankman

There's no such thing as yesterday, he thought dully. Memory is just today, happening over and over again, stamped indelibly with regret. — Helen Maryles Shankman