Lisa Goldstein Quotes

“You can’t ask questions like that,” André said. “The unconscious has its own logic.” But he looked a little puzzled, a little too tied to the world of logic and order.

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

They passed a closed police station. Someone had written on the wall, “It is forbidden to forbid.”

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.

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

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 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.

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

That’s what’s missing, she thought. Everyone in the city is so passionate about things. Here they are only passionate about their religion. They’ve lost everything else.

Your father was a very wise man. But you cannot acquire his wisdom by pretending to have it already.

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.