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“How one can never truly leave. And never quite return. Do you understand?”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“I know so little, she tells herself again, searching her mother's face. In the end, we know so little.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Snow can sometimes fall from a cloudless sky.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“She watches her mother drink, then sits by her again before the picture window to watch the snow fall, watching closely until she can hear it.

. . . Rachel listens to snow. And beyond snow.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“This is not a sweet skein of thought. Unthread it, Rachel.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“A wolf's sense of hearing is remarkably acute. A wolf can detect another's howl from as far as nineteen kilometres away.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“When Rachel asks him about days before his life as a Wolff, he will scowl and fidget and so she learns to wait for his recollections and, because it is so difficult for him, she will listen without speaking, collecting the pieces of his past painstakingly like a jigsaw maker, or a batsman accumulating runs, in awe of the impossible distance between a sliver of blue and a great sky, between three runs and a century, between a shard of memory and memory itself.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“She misses this, and other things, moments. Scenes and moments.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Who is this grave and pretty young woman? Not pretty. Beautiful. Yes, I think so. Who is she? I know so little. In the end, we know so little.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Zachariah, Zachariah. I've never been so long away. I never felt so much special pain. I never knew I loved you so much.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Every man has a part and a destiny, some stronger than others.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Wait for me, Kath. Coming soon. I feel it in my bones.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Returning to bed, Rachel strokes Zachariah's black curls as he drifts into sleep and appreciates the shape and fractal geometry there, the self-similarity and infinity of scale. She breathes in at his scalp, then presses her ear to his, listening for the clamour of voices within, to the long line of fighting men who made him, his head a seashell. There is a template for the fighting man. Rachel listens across three times nine countries, as the fairy-tale saying goes, across three times nine countries in the thirtieth tsardom . . .”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“He rises off the bed and tries to speak, but cannot stop the pain in his throat, and cannot articulate a word, capable only of an animal sound, a strangulated wheeze that shocks him deeply, enraging him, this sudden loss of the faculty of speech that feels somehow bestial and low.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Rachel slips off the bed and stands before him to rearrange his collar, aware that in this small gesture there is a quality acutely other than motherly, sisterly, companionable, and that, in this moment, everything ever intended for her, for them, has begun, that the beginning is in the rearrangement of his collar and not the first kiss they share now, Zach recovering his wind as quickly as he lost it, a Great Northern Diver resurfacing. Zach clasps his hands round her ears, steps into her body and breathes the very air from her lungs. His teeth scrape against hers and he rests his open mouth against her face, gasping for air, his eyes squeezed shut as in great pain. And Rachel and Zachariah are born. Now truly they are born.

'Zachariah, Zachariah,' whispers Rachel. 'My fighting man.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Remembrance is so physical!”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“He has come back from the verge of nevermore and is changed forever, and not just for the new bumps and scars upon his young head, bumps with a story to tell. I am a boxer! Yes, Sam has a calling now and a destiny and, day by day, gains in fortitude and definition, further moved to emotion by his bosom friends and further restored to vigour in thew and sinew.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Ah, Sam, sighs Tom Spring to himself. These are your beginnings. And in your beginnings, my end! Oh how the recollections connect, each to each, as links in a chain!”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Look what I have done! she thought. Let me not have killed him.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Hear me," she insists. "I shan't survive it, do you understand? If you get hurt. I shan't survive it.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“. . . sitting up cross-legged and noting the light, how it fills the room in streams, etching out the shape of Zach recumbent, a bold coastline in a clarion sky. I drop anchor here, thinks Rachel. Anywhere here. You are my home, my horizon, my shore. How long is the coast of Britain?”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Why are you so sad?" asks Zachariah in full fairy-tale voice, casting his arms wide for emphasis, displaying his superior reach.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“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 hairâ€�silken grass grows through his fingers.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Be my wolf," she says.

"I am your wolf," he replies, fighting for wind.

Let the day begin.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Zachariah, mind the palace," Rachel told her beloved before bashing off across three times nine countries. "But DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT enter the lists. No fighting! No barney, mill, contest, set-to, turn-up, battle, match!”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Nicky knew so many beautiful things.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Did I ever tell you I was challenged to a duel once, when I was a student in Geneva?"

"No!" Zach exclaims. "Fantastic! I'd love to fight a duel!”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Hopes are so very well constructed.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“When he leaves home to sow his oatsâ€�"

"Wild oats, Tasha. They have to be wild. Unless he ran off to be a farmer.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“It is long gone. Gone the way of so many things.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff