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

- Geraldine Brooks

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

- Geraldine Brooks

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.

- Geraldine Brooks

They say the Lord's Day is a day of rest, but those who preach this generally are not women.

- 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…

- Geraldine Brooks

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

- 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 …

- Geraldine Brooks

She was like a butterfly, full of color and vibrancy when she chose to open her wings, yet hardly visible when she closed them.

- Geraldine Brooks

We were too intelligent, too cynical for war. Of course, you don't have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death.

- Geraldine Brooks