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Ayelet Tsabari Quotes (0-)
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About Ayelet Tsabari
Ayelet Tsabari is an Israeli-Canadian writer.
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“Leaving, I discovered, did not cure my displacement, but rather reinforced it.”
“I know about death…Our country is haunted by its dead, weighed down by loss and remembrance.”
“Writing in a second language...is like wearing someone else's skin, an act akin to religious conversion.”
“I was a terrible soldier. That’s the thing with mandatory service—it’s not for everyone, yet everyone has to go.”
“Home became the liminal space in between-between identities, between cultures, between languages- and I was content claiming that space as my own, pleased to be different.”
“Jerusalem, a city surrounded by thick forests and rolling hills, where the air was fresh and cool, where everything was ancient, biblical, suffused with meaning. (chapter 18)”
“Maybe that's why the two of them felt so connected. Both waiting, both missing an integral part of themselves, the constant ache in their bodies throbbing like a phantom limb. (chapter 16)”
“I think a lot of women who have experienced sexual assault have the same story. It’s like an ulcer in our bodies. There is something positive about the experience of letting it out and telling the story.”
“I’ve never believed in “write what you know.” I believe in “write what you must.” So I tried, knowing that I very well might fail. When writing fiction, you need to find that kernel of truth within you and superimpose it onto your character.”
“Years later, when they are old, sitting on a porch somewhere overlooking the sea, someone would ask them how it all started, and he'd say, as soon as he saw her on the other side of the drinking fountain at the immigrant camp, he knew. (first lines of book)”
“The day Lily meets Lana is her two-week anniversary in Israel. She's lying on her belly in the dried grass outside the apartment building she now calls home, watching insects through her macro lens. She's sweating in her faded blue jeans and Converse high-tops. Then a shadow eclipses her sun.”
“I often tell students that I understand the need to write something right after it happens, but if you’re trying to craft it into an actual piece of art, a memoir or a creative nonfiction, I always say it’s best to wait...You need some distance to really make sense of it, I think, in writing.”
“I delight in the sound of Yemeni rolling out of my mouth, rejoice in accentuating the letters in that deep, melodic way, feeling as though in my own small way I'm keeping something alive-an endangered language, yes-but also more personally, our past, my childhood, as though in using these words I am channelling my ancestors.”
“Jewelry is an important part of Yemeni Jewish heritage. In Yemen, jewelry making was strictly a Jewish profession; the majority of the Jewish men were silversmiths and they were known for their fine craftsmanship. In fact, after the Jews went to Israel, Yemeni culture suffered a huge loss because they took their craft with them.”
“Some days I feel a physical ache for Arabic, a tug in my heart. How do you miss something you've never known? Can a language be lodged inside your body, folded into your organs, the same way we inherit memories from our ancestors, like trauma? How else can you explain the warmth that spreads inside my body when I hear it? The yearning?”
“When you write your first book, you get to write it in a bit of a bubble. You don’t know if it will be published, as much as you hope and wish for it, you don’t really know that. It’s kind of a safer place to write. And then when you write the second book, you’re aware of readership, you’re aware of views, of an audience out there, of expectations, and it’s more work to shut that down.”
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Ayelet Tsabari on Israel 3 quotes
“The sea is such a big part of life in Israel, of Israeli culture. You can actually taste it in the air.”
Ayelet Tsabari on Jerusalem
“Jerusalem, a city surrounded by thick forests and rolling hills, where the air was fresh and cool, where everything was ancient, biblical, suffused with meaning.”
What Ayelet Tsabari Said About Others
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Ayelet Tsabari on Dorit Rabinyan
“Dorit Rabinyan is a young author of Iranian background who writes beautifully about Iran and Israel.”
Quotes About Ayelet Tsabari
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Julie Banerjee Mehta on Ayelet Tsabari
“Perhaps Tsabari’s greatest attraction as a global storyteller is her absolute veracity— no holds barred, she has her reader in thrall with her art of fashioning her tellings with a refreshing turn of phrase. And like the burgeoning tribe of diasporic and postcolonial writers whose mother tongue is not English, she employs the once colonizer’s language to tell her stories in her own voice, that are being read by hundreds of thousands of immigrants who live in English-speaking countries which are their adopted homeland. Thus, the narrative is studded with unexpected gems — visual, audial, culinary and cerebral: “The sky cracked open like an eggshell”; “I would wish that I was the one leaving because that would be better than being left behind”; “I know about death…Our country is haunted by its dead, weighed down by loss and remembrance”...Tsabari’s creativity spins on the unique fulcrum of provoking the reader to think outside the box, and insidiously works to make the global reader understand the urgency to celebrate diversity with the art of acceptance.”
About Ayelet Tsabari
Ayelet Tsabari is an Israeli-Canadian writer.