“We know some professors who are the exact opposite of wild geese. First of all, they’re always quarreling… Second, their colors… Third, their necks are short.”

“Fire is a young body. / The winds of doubt will not touch it. / It refuses to dress in anything / but black garments.”

“Only in the East do lions and deer stop in their tracks to hear the sounds of distant water.”

“Then we strode solemnly down the chestnut allee—and the chestnuts bloomed a second time—white candles against the improbably profound blue of the sky.”

Ronit Matalon’s first novel to be translated into English is organized around 17 snapshots from an imaginary family photo album.

“People of the Galilee are strong as the sun / Rough as the terebinth tender as the oak / Fiery as the fires of Sodom / Sodden as the salt of the sea.”

“Yesterday I dreamt how the Nile rolled over its banks / and I saw the Delta inscribed upon the waters.”

It takes a year to read the entire Torah in synagogue, and on the holiday of Simchat Torah we finish the reading and begin again with Genesis.

“A beautiful scent arose from the etrogs and hadasim, which masked the smell of old books, most of which had come from the apartments of poor folk…”

“Ever since my pious mother ate earth on Yom Kippur, ate dark earth on Yom Kippur, mixed with fire, I, a living man, must eat dark earth on Yom Kippur”