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Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks Quotes

Journalist

Geraldine Brooks is an Australian journalist known for her in-depth investigative reporting and unique narrative style. She has over 30 years of experience in the news industry, having worked as a journalist and editor for The Sydney Morning Herald, among other news organizations.

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All Thinking Writing Knows Ifs Humans Men Mind People Years Leadership

Famous Geraldine Brooks Quotes

“How strange it is, Anna. Yesterday, I have filed in my mind as a good day, notwithstanding it was filled with mortal illness and the grieving of the recently bereft. Yet it is a good day, for the simple fact that no one died upon it. We are brought to a sorry state, that we measure what is good by such a shortened yardstick.”

Mind States Facts Simple Strange Died Filled Sorry Illness Yesterday Mortals Grieving Good Day Anna Yardsticks Bereft

Book:Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Source: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

“The day in 2004 when the radiologist told me I had invasive cancer, I walked down the hospital corridor looking for a phone to call my husband, and I could almost see the fear coming toward me like a big, black shadow.”

Bigs Black Husband Shadow Phones Cancer My Husband Hospitals Corridors

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Yes, it seems we've got this mutant gene in our human personality that makes us susceptible to this same kind of mistake over and over again. It's really uncanny how we build these beautiful multicultural edifices and then allow this switch to be flipped and everybody goes, 'Oh, the other, get them out of here.”

Humans Kind Seems Beautiful Mistake Personality Genes Susceptible Multicultural Edifice Uncanny Flipped Mutants Human Personality

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.”

Writing Sometimes Wall Down And Trade One Word Bricklaying

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I'm a praying atheist. When I hear an ambulance siren, I ask for a blessing for those people in trouble, knowing that no one's listening. I think it's just a habit of mindfulness.”

People Thinking Asks Knowing Trouble Listening Praying Habit Blessing Mindfulness Atheist Sirens Ambulance

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I was a news reporter for 16 years, seven of them a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps the most useful equipment I acquired in that time is a lack of preciousness about the act of writing. A reporter must write. There must be a story. The 'mot juste' unarriving? Tell that to your desk.”

Writing Years Stories Middle News Seven East Middle East Desks Reporters Equipment Balkans East Africa

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Sometimes I want to have a mental book burning that would scour my mind clean of all the filthy visions literature has conjured there. But how to do without 'The Illiad?' How to do without 'Macbeth?”

Want Mind Book Sometimes Literature Vision Clean Burning Filthy Book Burning

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.”

Mind Humans Book Hands Materials Human Mind Artifacts

Book:People of the Book: A Novel

Source: People of the Book: A Novel

“You go on. You set one foot in front of the other, and if a thin voice cries out, somewhere behind you, you pretend not to hear, and keep going.”

Ifs Voice Behinds Feet Fronts Cry Goes On Perseverance Persistence Keep Going Behind You

Book:March

Source: March

“God warns us not to love any earthly thing above Himself, and yet He sets in a mother's heart such a fierce passion for her babes that I do not comprehend how He can test us so.”

Heart Mother Passion Tests Fierce Babe Earthly Things

Book:Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Source: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

“I was really interested in how marriages work, how you can, you know, be in love with somebody and spend many years with your lives intertwined, but in the end another soul can be fundamentally unknowable. And I think that the stress of war, when one party goes away and the other has to deal at home, is a really testing time in a lot of marriages.”

Thinking Knows Years War Soul Ends Home Deals Party Stress Testing Intertwined

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.”

Imagination Fiction Known Records Structure Historical Historical Fiction Factual Scaffolding

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I think that you can honour the sacrifices of a common soldier without glorifying war.”

Thinking War Common Sacrifice Soldier Honour

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Moral certainty can deafen people to any truth other than their own.”

People Moral Certainty

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“There are always a few who stand up in times of communal madness and have the courage to say that what unites us is greater than what divides us.”

Greater Madness Divides

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.”

Animal Dog Torture Elephants Mourn Apes

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“My mother's family were full-on Irish Catholics - faith in an elaborate old fashioned, highly conservative and madly baroque style. I sort of fell out of the tribe over women's rights and social justice issues when I was just 13 years old.”

Years Mother Social Justice Issues Rights Style Catholic Social Justice Conservative Womens Rights Tribes Old Fashioned Baroque

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“September 11, 2001, revealed heroism in ordinary people who might have gone through their lives never called upon to demonstrate the extent of their courage.”

People Might Gone Ordinary Heroism September Ordinary People September 11 September 11 2001

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Both my parents loved words. That was the big deal in our house.”

Bigs House Parent Deals Big Deal

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.”

Writing I Can Sometimes Pages Crap

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Jewish prayers are mostly about daily things - the sliver of a new moon, dew on the grass, the bread and the wine.”

Prayer Moon Wine Bread Grass Dew New Moon Bread And Wine Eating Bread

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“My sentences tend to be very short and rather spare. I'm more your paragraph kind of gal.”

Kind Sentences Spares Paragraph Gals

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“The Sarajevans have a very particular world view - a mordant wit coupled with this unbearable sadness and... truckloads of guts, you know.”

Knows World Views Sadness Particular Wit Guts Unbearable World View

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“And one of the things that I learned was you can't generalise at all about a woman in a veil. You can't think you know her story, because she will confound you over and over again. She may be an engineer or a diplomat or a doctor. Or she may be an unbelievable babe with bleached hair down to her waist.”

Thinking Knows May Stories Hair Doctors Engineers Unbelievable Veils Babe Diplomats

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“And when I'd be reporting in Israel, Palestinians would say, the Jews they're not like us, and the Jews would say the same things about the Palestinians, they don't want what we want. And I never bought it as a reporter and I don't buy it as a novelist. I think, you know, the sound of somebody crying for their lost child sounds the same.”

Thinking Knows Want Children Lost Sound Cry Jew Israel Novelists Palestinian Reporters Lost Child

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Because I worked as a newspaper reporter for about 14 years before attempting my first novel, I learned to write under almost any circumstances- by candle light, in longhand, in African villages where there was no power, under shelling in Kurdistan.”

Writing Years Firsts Light Novel Circumstances Newspapers Village Candle Reporters Attempting Newspaper Reporters Candle Lights

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Both my mum and dad were great readers, and we would go every Saturday morning to the library, and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature, and all of us would come with an armful of books.”

Book Morning Reader Dad Library Cards My Sister Mum Saturday Signatures Mum And Dad Saturday Morning Library Cards

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Certainly I'm still mining my experiences as a journalist. I think it's no coincidence that all three of my novels basically are about how people act in a time of catastrophe. Do they go to their best self or their worst self?”

People Thinking Stills Self Three Novel Worst Journalist Coincidence Catastrophe Mining Best Self

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Even the classics that we read to our young children are full of wolves' fangs and burning ovens and bloody feet and ice shards piercing hearts. Even the New Testament climaxes with an act of unspeakable torture. Might as well just read to our kids from the Amnesty Annual Report and be done with it.”

“For most people, chemotherapy is no longer the chamber of horrors we often conceive it to be. Yes, it is an ordeal for some people, but it wasn't for me, nor for most of the patients I got to know during my four months of periodic visits to the chemo suite.”

People Knows Four Months Horror Patient Chamber Ordeals Chemotherapy

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I do believe that our modern English usage has become way too clipped and austere. I have been reading excerpts from the journals of 18th-century seafarers lately, and even the lowliest press-ganged deck-swabber turns a finer phrase than I do most days.”

Way Believe Has Beens Turns Reading Modern Century Presses Phrases Journal Deck Usage 18th Century Modern English

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I had been afraid of breast cancer, as I suspect most women are, from the time I hit adolescence. At that age, when our emerging sexuality is our central preoccupation, the idea of disfigurement of a breast is particularly horrifying.”

Ideas Age Cancer Sexuality Breasts Suspects Adolescence Emerging Breast Cancer Preoccupation Disfigurement

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.”

Years Saws Dad Presses My Dad Eight Newspapers Journalist Rolling Printing Sydney Printing Press

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I think probably the scaredest I've ever been was in Somalia. I arrived there when the episode that became known as 'Black Hawk Down' was still taking place. The Americans were still pinned down under fire. And everybody else was basically going the other way, and I was the only one putting my hand up for a flight in.”

Thinking Way Stills Hands Black Known Fire Flight Episodes Hawks Hands Up Somalia Black Hawk Down

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“If screenwriters have to kill off a female character, they love to give her cancer. We've seen so many great actresses go down to the Big C: Ali MacGraw, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon.”

Ifs Giving Character Bigs Female Cancer Actresses Screenwriters Female Characters Emma

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Men can absent themselves from real life for their art more easily. Women are anchored into the quotidian business of getting food on the table, making sure everybody's socks match, the soccer gear is ready. I admire idealists, but they're usually enabled by someone who holds the tether on their balloon, who pays the bills and sweeps up after them.”

Men Art Real Pay Ready Tables Bills Real Life Admire Soccer Absent Gears Sock Balloons Idealist

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Sydney in the 1960s wasn't the exuberant multicultural metropolis it is today. Out in the city's western reaches, days passed in a sun-struck stupor. In the evenings, families gathered on their verandas waiting for the 'southerly buster' - the thunderstorm that would break the heat and leave the air cool enough to allow sleep.”

Enough Today Waiting Sleep Cities Break Sun Air Western Evening Heat 1960s Sydney Multicultural Thunderstorm Metropolis Busters

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“When I write a word in English, a simple one, such as, say, 'chief,' I have unwittingly ushered a querulous horde into the room. The Roman legionary is there, shaking his 'cap,' or head, and Al Cap is there, slouching in his signature working man's headgear.”

Men Writing Simple Rooms Chiefs Shaking Caps Signatures Horde Working Man

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“When you're writing non-fiction, you go as far as you can go, and then ethically you have to stop. You can't go. You can't suppose. You can't imagine. And I think there's something in human nature that wants to finish the story.”

Thinking Want Writing Humans Stories Fiction Imagine Human Nature Non Fiction

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“While I love to read contemporary fiction, I'm not drawn to writing it. Perhaps it's because the former journalist in me is too inhibited by the press of reality; when I think about writing of my own time I always think about nonfiction narratives. Or perhaps it's just that I find the present too confounding.”

Thinking Writing Reality My Own Fiction Presses Contemporary Former Narrative Journalist Nonfiction Contemporary Fiction Love To Read Confounding

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“'You've got mail!' exclaims the cheery automaton at America Online. The flag on the mailbox icon waves invitingly on my computer screen. For a second, I'm 10 years old again, waiting for the postman's whistle to slice the stillness of an Australian afternoon.”

Years America Waiting Computer Wave Screens Online Afternoon Flags Stillness Mail Australian Icons Whistling Postman Computer Screen Mailboxes

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“...The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox. p. 361”

People Ifs Humans Matter Reason Human Beings United Tests Catholic Jew Orthodox Divided

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.”

Knows Men Mind Attitude Library

Book:March

Source: March

“I took the T from Logan airport to Harvard Square. I hate driving in Boston. It's the traffic that drives me spare, and the absolutely terrible manners of the motorists. Other New Englanders refer to Massachusetts drivers as "Massholes.”

Hate Terrible I Hate Driving Manners Drivers Squares Traffic Spares Airports Boston Harvard Massachusetts

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.”

Book Mass Graves Burning Stakes Ovens Forerunners Book Burning

Book:People of the Book: A Novel

Source: People of the Book: A Novel

“If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.”

Ifs Knows Men Persons Class Doubt No Doubt Trusted

Book:March

Source: March

“Instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence.”

Girl Energy Industry Independence Intellect Vanity Feeding Idleness Spoons My Girl Energy Industry

Book:March

Source: March

“And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share.”

Giving Happens Share

Book:Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Source: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

“If a man is to lose his fortune, it is a good thing if he were poor before he acquired it, for poverty requires aptitude.”

Ifs Men Loses Poor Poverty Good Things Fortune Aptitude

Book:March

Source: March

“Who is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.”

Ifs Men Feels Mind Fear Term Imagination Bravery Brave Polite Rationality No Fear Brave Man

Book:March

Source: March

About the Author

Born: September 14, 1955
Died: June 19, 1977
Known for: Journalist
Quotes: 103

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