Quotes by Benjamin Sacks

“it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright””

“I had been to Amsterdam a couple of times with Eric; we loved the museums and the Concertgebouw (it was here that I first heard Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, in Dutch). We loved the canals lined with tall, stepped houses; the old Hortus Botanicus and the beautiful seventeenth-century Portuguese synagogue; the Rembrandtplein with its open-air cafés; the fresh herrings sold in the streets and eaten on the spot; and the general atmosphere of cordiality and openness which seemed peculiar to the city.””

“Leonardo da Vinci and the much younger Michelangelo had often made it clear that they had no respect for each other’s craft. Leonardo disparaged the new trend for portraying overly muscular male nudes”

“The Hebrew Bible is the West’s key text of human freedom – and more than it tells the story of man’s faith in God, it tells the story of God’s faith in humankind. The Joseph story brings Genesis to closure by showing that sibling rivalry is not written indelibly into the human script. We can change, repent and grow. The brothers show that they have changed when they demonstrate that they are no longer willing to let Benjamin – the Joseph-substitute – be enslaved. Joseph, by his act of reconciliation, shows that he is not captive to the past and its resentments. His statement, ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good’, shows the power of a religious vision to reframe history, liberating ourselves from the otherwise violent dynamic of revenge and retaliation.””

“When Mrs Reed turned the next page, a massive ball-sack stared us in the face, silencing us. ‘This,’ Mrs Reed said solemnly, ‘is a scrotum.’ With her finger, she proceeded to outline the wrinkly sac of skin, which hung out of the book sadly. We got the sense Mrs Reed didn’t much care for the scrotum. She gave it a wary look, as if to say, ‘So, we meet again, scrotum, my old nemesis.””