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Famous Emma Richler Quotes

“There are times today when Rachel looks at Zach and sees an effusion, she sees him in colours of yellow and blue, sun and sky. She sees the yellow crew-neck jumper and blue jeans the boy of eight years old appeared in the day he came to Chelsea from the Coram Family via the two or three previous fosterers who returned him there, defeated, pronouncing him uncommunicative and maladroit in the extreme, animal, said one; unruly. So why this boy? For Katya the fractious? Of all the orphan boys in the world, why him? Of all potential mothers, why Katya? What did she see? Everyone has a part and a destiny. Rachel remembers the yellow jumper the boy rarely removed, even after the family shopping spree for a new wardrobe at Harrods followed by lunch in a restaurant with napkins large as small tablecloths, and heavy cutlery and wine for Katya and Lev and a pervasive daunting hush. Zach had never been to a restaurant before and chose spaghetti, because he knew what it was. He ate it with knife and fork. On the day he arrived in Chelsea, he stopped in the vestibule to slip his feet from lace-ups without undoing the bows, removing his shoes with institutional efficiency, left hand still held in Katya's right. Rachel sees that boy still, blue and yellow. Sky and sun.”

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Book:Be My Wolff
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“Why so sad?" Zach queries in fairy-tale tones. "Rachel?" "O my brother Ivanushka," she recites. "A heavy stone is round my throat, silken grass grows through my fingers, yellow sand lies on my breast." "That's perishing gloomy," Zach remarks. "It ends happily though. Gracious! Everything sounds depressing this morning," adds Rachel. "There's a teacher at my school, she's very young, but she goes, Gracious! Just like a dowager. Makes me laugh. Except this morning. I can't help it. I am too depressed. I hate those voices so much. In the Gardens." "Stop listening," Zach scolds and put his hands in her hair—silken grass grows through his fingers.”

DialogueDescriptionFairy TalesAllusionBe My WolffEmma RichlerRussian Fairy Tales
Book:Be My Wolff
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“A fighter, muses Rachel, is a fighter through and through, consistently irregular, a fighting man on every scale. Fractal, fractious, with a rough complexity! Nothing she can do. A fractal, Papa once told her, is a way of seeing infinity. In Zachariah, she sees infinity. Mandelbrot famously wrote a paper called 'How Long Is the Coast of Britain?,' the answer to which, of course, is that it depends how you look at it. The closer one looks, the larger it is. And more and more intricate, on an infinite scale. There is a template for all things.”

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Book:Be My Wolff
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“It is perfectly scientific,' Lev protests, rising to draw the heavy dining room curtains against the streetlamp light, reducing it to a glow that bleeds amber round the edges and between the panels of plum brocade. Lev turns back into the room but stays by the window a moment to observe the new play of light, the chandelier casting shards of glitter upon mahogany and bold shadows across the high brow and long sharp plains of Katya's timeless face. Oh my wife.”

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Book:Be My Wolff
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“The hours stretch out in summer, the evenings go on and on; has he lost track of hours? Where are you, Zachariah? Come home! Rachel stands by the windows again, listening to the thrum in Camden Road and the Gardens behind, everything noisier on long summer afternoons, streets and voices, people speaking louder even face-to-face as if fighting to be heard over the seasonal rush of blood, over the bright light and heightened smells and unusual clamour of days. The city transfigured this year almost overnight and it has not rained in weeks. How the sun shines, how the rain falls, the qualities of light and precipitation, London has a microclimate all its own. London weather has powers of change, change and conjuration.”

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Book:Be My Wolff
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