Geraldine Quotes & Sayings

Leaders can be moral-and they should be moral-without imposing their morality on others. — Geraldine Ferraro

Fashion says 'Me too', and style says 'Only me'. — Geraldine Stutz

Does any woman ever count the grains of her harvest and say: Good enough? Or does one always think of what more one might have laid in, had the labor been harder, the ambition more vast, the choices more sage? — Geraldine Brooks

In the heir's world, where everything was available, the unattainable had a wild allure. — Geraldine Brooks

My desk drawer is filled with all kinds of prayers. — Geraldine Ferraro

He was not afraid of silence, which most of us will rush to fill. — Geraldine Brooks

She'd been married at twelve, before her menarche, and had been pregnant or lactating ever since. — Geraldine Brooks

[If the Democratic nominee turns out to be] Walter Mondale, I hope he picks Representative Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. It would be a desperate move, but that's what it'll take to get rid of Reagan. Ms. Ferraro is no more unqualified than a lot of Vice Presidential candidates have been, and anyhow Mondale's in good health. — Hendrik Hertzberg

I am not part of that earlier Australian generation who set off on a deliberate search for fame and fortune in distant lands. My generation was the first that didn't need to. By the 1980's when I left home, our culture had grown deep enough and wide enough to encompass all but the most rarefied of ambitions. — Geraldine Brooks

asked how, if he never had spoken before to women outside his family, he was able to serve as spiritual counselor to the village women. My friend looked at me strangely. "They put their problems to him through their husbands, of course," he said. "But what if their husband is their problem?" That possibility hadn't crossed either man's mind. — Geraldine Brooks

The word for mother, umm, is the root of the words for "source, nation, mercy, first principle, rich harvest; stupid, illiterate, parasite, weak of character, without opinion." In — Geraldine Brooks

I did note this, and set it down as yet one more of life's injustices: that the man who has been wealthy is dunned more civilly than the fellow who has ever been poor. My creditors would come to me most graciously, diffident, if not downright apologetic, for asking what was theirs. It was as if I would be doing them a great, unlooked for kindness if only I would pay them a trifling sum on my outstanding debts. I would give them tea, and polite conversation, and, even when my answer to their just entreaty had to be a regretful, "Nothing, sir, " my mortification was always entirely self-inflicted, for their civility never failed — Geraldine Brooks

I don't see her anymore. We don't even go through the motions. Ozren had been right about one thing: some stories just don't have happy endings. — Geraldine Brooks

But I do think its necessary to have debates. — Geraldine Ferraro

At fifteen, I have taken up the burdens of a woman, and have come to feel I am one. Furthermore, I am glad of it. For I now no longer have the time to fall into such sins as I committed as a girl, when hours that were my own to spend spread before me like a gift. — Geraldine Brooks

And when I'd be reporting in Israel, Palestinians would say, the Jews they're not like us, and the Jews would say the same things about the Palestinians, they don't want what we want. And I never bought it as a reporter and I don't buy it as a novelist. I think, you know, the sound of somebody crying for their lost child sounds the same. — Geraldine Brooks

Marriage is a linchpin in many women's lives, but many other things can create a satisfying life. I adore my career. It stretches every physical, emotional, and intellectual muscle I have. — Geraldine Stutz

I was kind of feeling a spiritual need all those years. My wife Geraldine and I went to an Episcopalian Church for a while. Oh, it just seemed very political to me that a guy so liberal was talking about opposing the war in Vietnam and I didn't want to hear that when I went to church. I wanted something spiritual. — Robert Novak

Next to motherhood, I personally believe that being an author is the best job in the world. — Geraldine Solon

Unhappy people do the oddest, most terrible things, just trying to keep despair at bay. All you have to do is accept them ... go around them ... take evasive action. — Geraldine McCaughrean

I started writing because I found I could spend more time in my own imagination by doing that than I could by reading. — Geraldine McCaughrean

This is called My Youth in Vienna. It's a very nice edition
an association copy, Schnitzler to his Latin master, one Johann Auer, 'with thanks for the Auerisms.' [ ... ] Here he apologizes for writing so much on 'the so-called Jewish question.' But he says that no Jew, no matter how assimilated, was allowed to forget the fact of his birth. [ ... ] 'Even if you managed to conduct yourself so that nothing showed, it was impossible to remain completely untouched; as for instance a person may not remain unconcerned whose skin has been anesthetized but who has to watch, with his eyes open, how it is scratched by an unclean knife, even cut until the blood flows.' [ ... ] He wrote that in the early 1900s. The imagery is very chilling, is it not, in the light of what followed ... — Geraldine Brooks

The public is entitled to know whether or not I am married to Jack The Ripper. — Geraldine Ferraro

I cannot say that I have faith anymore. Hope, perhaps. We have agreed that it will do for now. — Geraldine Brooks

We cannot know the future, nor can we change it, ... It is best to be realistic about such things. But we have the time we have been given. So let us treasure it while we can. — Geraldine Brooks

The fact was that I had always been considered a leader in my scholastic career. It just never dawned on me that this was any kind of preparation for the business world. Like most young women of my background and education, I always performed on demand and never anything else. — Geraldine Stutz

The great thing about being always among people of noble manners was the inevitable elevation of one's own. — Geraldine Brooks

I bent my head and breathed the fresh new scent of her. I looked into her deep blue eyes and saw reflected there the dawn of my own new life. This little girl seemed to me, at that moment, answer enough to all my questions. To have saved this small, singular one - this alone seemed reason enough that I lived. I knew then that this was how I was meant to go on: away from death and toward life, from birth to birth, from seed to blossom, living my life amongst wonders. — Geraldine Brooks

She was quick of mind and swift of tongue, always ready to answer a set down with the kind of witty rebuke most of us can think of only long after the moment of insult has passed. — Geraldine Brooks

I don't like to practice ahead of time what I'm going to say. — Geraldine Ferraro

To believe, to act, and to have events confound you - I grant you, that is hard to bear. But to believe, and not to act, or to act in a way that every fiber of your soul held was wrong - how can you not see? That is what would have been reprehensible. — Geraldine Brooks

Whilst you live a very little religion seems enough; but believe me, it requires a great deal when you come to die. — Geraldine Jewsbury

When you're writing non-fiction, you go as far as you can go, and then ethically you have to stop. You can't go. You can't suppose. You can't imagine. And I think there's something in human nature that wants to finish the story. — Geraldine Brooks

Some leaders are born women. — Geraldine Ferraro

You had to be tough to be a female member of Congress. — Geraldine Ferraro

If Islamic countries can't come up with their own principles for women's competition," she said in one widely reported speech, "then the way dictated by Western oppressing countries will be imposed on us." Iran — Geraldine Brooks

If a man loves you he's not going to ask you to give up the things you love. — Geraldine Solon

I stand before you to proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us. — Geraldine Ferraro

So this was how it was to be, now: I would do my best to live in the quick world, but the ghosts of the dead would be ever at hand. — Geraldine Brooks

Whose are all these ghosts?" she said, smiling at a flustered-looking Geraldine.
"Oh," said Geraldine, "I think they might be mine ... ? — Diane Hall

Harvard Square could feel like a party on a warm night, full of energy and privilege and promise. Or it could seem like one of the bleakest places on earth
an icy, windswept rat maze where kids wasted their youth clawing over one another in a fatuous contest for credentials. — Geraldine Brooks

We were too intelligent, too cynical for war. Of course, you don't have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death. — Geraldine Brooks

But some things on earth were possible, and some were not, and Ruti knew the difference. — Geraldine Brooks

I think that you can honour the sacrifices of a common soldier without glorifying war. — Geraldine Brooks

Save the Children, an organization whose research has proved repeatedly that money in women's hands benefits families much more than money flowing to men. — Geraldine Brooks

You are your greatest product and behind every book lies an author who wrote it. — Geraldine Solon

I always thought writer's block was something that prats used as an easy excuse for not doing any work. — Geraldine McCaughrean

All the times, all the very many times, I had been forced to thwart and stifle my own nature seemed to gather together then, in that hot and dismal corridor. I heard a rushing sound in my head and felt a pressure in my breast, like floodwaters rising behind a flimsy dike. Before I knew I did it, the soup bowl was rising in my hand as if elevated by some supernatural force. Then, its yellow-gray contents were running down the nurse's pudgy face. — Geraldine Brooks

Good yield does not come without suffering, it does not come without struggle, and toil, and yes, loss. — Geraldine Brooks

I knew I could not live my life around a husband, now would I want a husband to live his life around me. Of course, there are any number of variations in marital relationships between those extremes. But there is always a need for spouses to change their behaviors or habits to suit each other. I have always been set in my ways and did not fancy changing my behavior or lifestyle. — Geraldine Lee Wei Ling

It is a great thing to be young and to live without pain. And yet it is a blessing few of us count until we lose it. — Geraldine Brooks

It's remarkable how very many things there are that a king may not do. — Geraldine Brooks

You don't need a prophet to tell you to eat. — Geraldine Brooks

Terrell is weeping soundlessly, and despite the guard's objection, he raises his hand up to the glass. Geraldine mimics him, lining her fingers up with his. It's lonely to think that one little sheet of glass could create such a thick distance between them, but all the same, regardless of what he's done, he's still one of the closest friends she has. — Rebecca McNutt

Modern life is confusing no "Ms take" about it. — Geraldine Ferraro

David would wear no purple cloth, no symbols of his kingship, when he went to greet the ark. In its presence, we were all of us servants. — Geraldine Brooks

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence. — Geraldine Brooks

If somebody from the past doesn't rise up from the grave and start talking to me, I haven't got a book. I have to hear that voice, the voice of the narrator. How she sounds will tell me who she is, and who she is will tell me how she will act - and that starts the plot in motion. — Geraldine Brooks

I had been afraid of breast cancer, as I suspect most women are, from the time I hit adolescence. At that age, when our emerging sexuality is our central preoccupation, the idea of disfigurement of a breast is particularly horrifying. — Geraldine Brooks

I've spent all my life playing roles that illustrious people have played before me. — Geraldine McEwan

I am not a hero. Life has not required it of me. — Geraldine Brooks

Disappointment is a beautiful woman reading Ayn Rand. — Geraldine Brooks

Go ragged then, but pride makes a poor covers; once one man laughs you're naked. — Geraldine Harris

I was so shy. I used to cross the street so I wouldn't even have to talk to my relatives, much less strangers. That's not shy, that's wise. But I found that that when you had a journalist's notebook in your hand it wasn't really you, you see. — Geraldine Brooks

A scandal had traditionally been an easy way to dispose of an inconvenient woman. — Geraldine Brooks

I love the Oscars. All sorts of tacky people win. And watching everyone run up and down those aisles is just adorable. — Geraldine Page

But have you never noticed that when one has been trying to do something really good one is much nearer committing some special sin than when one keeps on in the selfish, matter-of-fact prudence of minding one's own business, and that alone? — Geraldine Jewsbury

I still keep thinking someone will penetrate my guilty secret - that I have been masquerading as a writer all these years while all I was really doing was enjoying myself, pursuing my passion. — Geraldine McCaughrean

I have lived most of my life in soldiers' camps. I know what they saw. I know how they think. Their confidence sours as sudden as curdled milk. — Geraldine Brooks

This was a woman raised in a turbulent house, who had learned early to master herself. — Geraldine Brooks

It's too late," she said, her voice trembling. "You are not the beautiful innocent vagabond walking toward me under the dogwood blossoms, with his trunks and his head full of worthless notions. And I am not the beloved, cherished ladies' maid ... — Geraldine Brooks

My gift, if I have one, is choosing terrific talent and providing the atmosphere for them to do their best work. — Geraldine Stutz

We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures. — Geraldine Brooks

It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy. — Geraldine Brooks

When I'm depressed and I feel low thinking that good movies are not made any more, then I put on his movies and I watch them. I laugh and I cry and I have great pleasure. — Geraldine Chaplin

When a guy gets elected to the Senate or the governor's mansion, he wakes up the next morning and says to himself, 'You're presidential material,' — Geraldine Ferraro

I was really interested in how marriages work, how you can, you know, be in love with somebody and spend many years with your lives intertwined, but in the end another soul can be fundamentally unknowable. And I think that the stress of war, when one party goes away and the other has to deal at home, is a really testing time in a lot of marriages. — Geraldine Brooks

I had this story that had been banging around in my head and I thought, 'I'll just see if there's anything there.' So I wrote a few chapters of the book that became 'Year of Wonders,' and lucky for me it found its readers. — Geraldine Brooks

His spirit is like a guttering candle — Geraldine Brooks

My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go. This, I thought, must be the kindness that God does for them and for us, since He gives so many infants such a little while to bide with us. — Geraldine Brooks

Time turned into a rope that unraveled as a languid spiral. — Geraldine Brooks

I felt the reckless abandon of one who knows she stands already among the damned. "Why not, then, another sin? — Geraldine Brooks

If you are drowning in a sewer, your first concern might be that you are drowning, not how vile you smell. — Geraldine Brooks

The women have been told it's written in the Koran that they must do these things," she said. She could tell them it wasn't but, as an outsider and a woman, her word meant little against the word of the village sheik. — Geraldine Brooks

I had begun this journey following him into the hidden corners of his world and here it ended with him crossed over into the brightest heights of mine. — Geraldine Brooks

Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade. — Geraldine Brooks

You need to be able to climb into a narrative and zip it up under your chin. You need to be able to see through the eyes of the hero, smell what he's smelling, hear what he's hearing. — Geraldine McCaughrean

I had all those cable networks reporting to me, I had a number of windows in my office and I had all the corporate perks you could possibly imagine, but that wasn't what I was about, so I left. — Geraldine Laybourne

If you make films, you're changing rhythm the whole time. You go from a quiet life to an absolutely turbulent life which is typical of moviemaking. And then you get back to your normal life and you have to have nerves of steel. — Geraldine Chaplin

Who cares about 17-21 year olds? Jack Myers does, and you should, too, if you want a front row seat on where the future of business and civilization is going. — Geraldine Laybourne

He had scooped up another handful of sand and stared at each grain as it fell through his fingers. 'You are like these. Each a trifling speck. A hundred, many hundreds - what matter? Cast them into the air. You cannot even find them when they land upon the ground. But there are more grains than you can count. There is no end to them. You will pour across this land, and we will be smothered. Your stone walls, your dead trees, the hooves of your strange beasts trampling the clam beds. My uncle sees these things, here and now. And in his trance, he sees that worse is coming. You walls will rise everywhere until they shut us out. You will turn the land upside down with your ploughs until all the hunting grounds are gone. This, and more, my uncle sees. — Geraldine Brooks

one in five Muslim girls lives today in a community that sanctions some sort of interference with her genitals. — Geraldine Brooks

I was a pretty delicate kid. Anything that was going around I'd get it and I'd generally get it much worse than other people, so I spent a lot of time out of school. — Geraldine Brooks

Sometimes you can't let a complete dearth of natural talent or ability stop you from doing something. — Geraldine DeRuiter

Many men believe in the saying that educating women is like allowing the nose of the camel into the tent: eventually the beast will edge in and take up all the room inside. — Geraldine Brooks

The author of this text did not write to provoke, but merely to express a truth as he conceives it. Your own theologians have tied logic in knots to advance a doctrine addressing this very same point. What is the Virgin Birth, after all, but the fumbling of minds striving to deal with the indelicate realities of the body? We Jews are merely more forthright about such matters. — Geraldine Brooks

I am 54 years old and happily single. In addition to my nuclear family, I have a close circle of friends. Most of my friends are men. But my reputation is such that their female partners would never consider me a threat. — Geraldine Lee Wei Ling

The surfeit of loss in my life has convinced me it will be easier to be grieved for than to grieve.
Bethia as an old woman about to die
p 257 — Geraldine Brooks

You sat in your nice little flat all through our war and watched us, bleeding all over the TV news. And you thought, 'How awful!' and then you got up and made yourself another cup of gourmet coffee." I flinched when he said that. It was a pretty accurate description. — Geraldine Brooks

When a kingdom rests on it, I always expect difficulty. Then, if there is none, no blame. But if there is, one is prepared. — Geraldine Brooks