Geraldine Brooks
Journalist
1955-09-14
Books by Geraldine Brooks
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Quotes by Geraldine Brooks
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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?
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It didn't take me long out there, in the landscapes my father had painted, to realize that as much as I loved my country [Australia], I barely knew it. I'd spent so many years studying the art of our immigrant cultures, and barely any time at all on the one that had been here all along....So I set myself a crash course and became a pioneer in a new field: desperation conservation. My job became the documentation and preservation of ancient Aboriginal rock art, before the uranium and bauxite companies had a chance to blast it into rubble (pp. 345-346)
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Curiosity – if not desire, if not plain kindness – might have led him to greater zeal.
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From Caleb's Crossing--This is an excellent thought about family though it doesn't apply to me. I am lucky in my brothers.Now, of all times in my life, did I wish Caleb truly was my brother, rather than that selfish, imperious, weak-willed soul to whom fate had shackled me.
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One did not need to penetrate David's secret counsels or insinuate a man in his bodyguard. All one needed was a pair of years and access to the royal precincts. Just to eavesdrop upon his singing was to develop an accurate idea of his state of mind.
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To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.
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David ran through concrete advantages. And then set aside the practical. The pragmatist was gone, replaced by the poet and mystic.
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No one sits, as you do, so close to a king, who does not begin to grasp how the levers of power work, and the cost of the oil that must grease them.
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As wars dwindled to skirmishes and our strength grew, so David was able to spend less time with military commanders and more with the engineers and overseers who were fanning out throughout the land, digging cisterns, making roads, fortifying, connecting, and generally making a nation out of our scattered people.
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The stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip.
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When a kingdom rests on it, I always expect difficulty. Then, if there is none, no blame. But if there is, one is prepared.
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I thought it best to add nothing further, to let the line of his thought lead him to his own conclusions.
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This night he was a king before he was a man. At this time, this troubled me. Later, I would have cause to wish it were always so.
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Avner had lived too long and become too canny to claim the crown of Israel for himself.
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Even though he said no store in uncanny things, he was soldier enough to value with whatever weapon came to hand.
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If soldiering did not interest him, the soldiers themselves were another matter. He loved to sit with the men and draw out their first-hand stories of past campaigns.
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David was at his best in group settings, soldier enough to join in the raucous jests, king enough to make it matter that he remembered some moments of bravery or sacrifice, and praised each man accordingly.
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The common soldiers did not blame him for his excessive grief. They knew him. They knew his flaws. Indeed, I think they loved him all the more because he was flawed, as they were, and did not hide his passionate, blemished nature.
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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.
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He is able to put aside personal feelings and see the broad strokes. Experience counts in these things.
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