Lisa Goldstein Quotes

You really can’t choose the people you’re going to like.

Layla’s story, though not always accurate, was far more interesting than the truth.

A novel?" André laughed. "The novel's dead—don't waste your time. The novel takes a small—oh, infinitely small—cut-and-dried section of so-called reality and calls it art. Your life is art. Don't waste it trying to write a novel.

Suddenly he didn’t care if the revolution were lost or won, only that it be over.

You think you can be as heroic as he was, simply by dying. But he doesn’t take courage to die. That’s easy. It takes courage to live.

I can't believe this," Mary said, whispering urgently. "Every time I talk to you I think I've heard the worst, and then you come along and say something even stupider.

Robert, how have you been? You look good. They've been telling me a fantastic story, I don't believe a word of it…"
Robert sat down at the table next to Paul and ordered grenadine. "It's all true," he said. "Every word of it, even the parts they made up.

She was already caught in the enchanted net of the bookshelves. She walks down rows of books about history, science, cooking, a large section devoted to car repair. Her feet on the linoleum floor, and the young man turning pages, made the only sounds in the store. It’s like drinking, Claire thought, delighted, running her fingers over the spines. Worse, because the spell lasts longer. If you read, don’t drive.

Three of her children were in school. At some time the government had recorded that Mama had three children of school age, so every day Mama sent three different children off to school. The teachers never seemed to notice.

You are wrong, Rabbi. You did not kill your daughter. And it does not matter now if you could have done something to save her or not. To think about what might have happened is useless. You can think about what might have happened, turn it over and over in your mind until you can’t think of anything else. You can plan your revenge or—or suicide. But none of that can change the past. The dead—your daughter and my parents—they would want us to go on. To live.

Maybe art couldn’t survive it if was sponsored by the government. Maybe art always had to be subversive.

Lots of people would give anything to be in your place."
"I'm not lots of people," Mary said. "I'm me. That's what I'll never forgive, that you did all this without even asking me.

We are all tourists in each others’ lives. We all have monuments and ruins, places of strange beauty and forbidden sites chained off and locked securely so that no visitors can get in. And none of us has the guidebook to anyone else, or even the list of most commonly used phrases. We just have to get along the best we can.

Collective insanity is boring. Individual insanity—that’s what interests me.

Movies should be silent, like dreams.