Lucy Beckett Quotes & Sayings

Watching Hamlet embarrassing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by showing them he knows they're liars and spies, Max was thinking, Hamlet cares only about the truth, or only he cares about the truth, and it's so hard to find, too hard for anyone to find. Where is it? — Lucy Beckett

Werner thought that the fact that Russia had won the war showed that history was on the side of Communism and not on the side of Nazism. So Communism must be true. To Werner, who had once believed Hitler's stories and now believed Stalin's stories, people one by one, their lives and their deaths, were of no account compared to the wonderful progress of history towards a heaven on earth. Could Werner see that stories of heaven and hell, happiness and punishment, used by powerful people to make others obey them - the description he had given of religion - really was a description of both Nazism and Communism? — Lucy Beckett

Are we going to get out of here, do you think?" "Oh, they'll have to release us sooner or later. Prisoners of war, which is how they must be classifying us, have to be released at the end of hostilities. There are international rules. I was a prisoner of war before, nearly forty years ago. — Lucy Beckett

They decreed that rabbis were no longer to function as rabbis, that they could not teach, or decide Jewish questions in rabbinical courts, or be paid by their community. Each of them had to announce in the Yiddish press that he had ceased all rabbinical duties and that no one was to consult him about anything. This was to be the end of hundreds and hundreds of years of religious life. — Lucy Beckett

God forgives us, as - when - we forgive them who injure us - and ourselves. These last weeks I think I have understood what many times in the past I thought I knew - but we never know - we never reach the end of understanding - the understanding of God - the mystery of his love ... — Lucy Beckett

Construction of the socialist future. No, thank you. In any case, if you — Lucy Beckett

When they were all ready, Halpern again counted them in, and the lyrical clarinet line floated over the strings and, Max felt, out of the open window and on, out and out over the hot, dusty July city like summer rain. — Lucy Beckett

The clouds to the south had cleared, and the sun appeared, gradually pushing shadow down the hills, spreading light like syrup over the brown slopes and the forests down to the lake. — Lucy Beckett

It's not my business to worry about the reason. God knows the reason. One day I may discover what it was. Or not. It doesn't matter. All I know now is that I can't stake a bit of my life on it being true, the story. If it's true it requires the staking of the whole of my life. And that's because it's not only a story, as you and I have always called it. It's something that happened in reality, to reality, and changed it forever. It's something that asked a question that, once we've heard it, we have to answer. — Lucy Beckett

The authority of the Church was thrown over by the authority of the state. Twenty years only have passed, and the authority of the state is already thrown over by the authority of conscience ... I fear for those yet unborn, that they are already betrayed. Robbed of the truth we can inherit, they will know their sins as only misery, and their forgiveness they will not know at all because they do not know God. Then at last men will be free of God. Then they will be slaves indeed. — Lucy Beckett