# All the Rivers - Author: [Dorit Rabinyan](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan.md) - Quotes: 7 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan/all-the-rivers ## Quotes > Those frozen December days, the last days of 2002, come back to me years later slightly blurred, shining through the mist, as though preserved in my memory right from the start with a slightly unreal distortion. Or perhaps it's that over time they have lost some of their sharpness and acquired a dreamy afterglow. 14 [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan/all-the-rivers/those-frozen-december.md) > Quiet hours and long talks, awash in each other... (ch 14) [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan/all-the-rivers/quiet-hours-and.md) > ...my gaze meets the laptop screen and the words I poured out all afternoon. It began yesterday without any particular intent, just a quick reply to my sister. But today when I went back, the email suddenly took on a different form, more feverish, more poetic. I was seized by a storytelling binge, a lucid, cutting clarity, and from page to page the words joined together and frothed and flowed. And it is then that I realize I am not writing to Iris anymore. That the recipient is in fact myself, an as-of-yet unknown self, a me who has long ago gone back to Israel and is living my tomorrow-life in Tel Aviv, a distant me who will one day open up this file and read the words, and perhaps with hindsight have a better understanding of what is occurring inside me now, what I am going through in these mad and beautiful days. She will remember us as we once were, in New York, in Hilmi's Brooklyn studio. She will read the lines and remember how I sat here once on this couch, in December of 2002, like the bird perched on the windowsill all afternoon, and watched myself loving him while I wrote these words. (chapter 14) [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan/all-the-rivers/my-gaze-meets.md) > Someone was at the door. I was vacuuming, with Nirvana on the stereo at full volume, and the polite doorbell chirps had failed to break through, rousing me only when they lost their patience and became long and aggressive. It was mid-November, early on a Saturday afternoon. I'd managed to get a few things done in the morning and was now busy cleaning. I vacuumed the couches and the hardwood floor, my ears bursting with the hollow roar of air and the reverberating music, a monotonous screen of white noise that somehow imbued me with calm. I was free of thoughts as I wielded the suction hose to root out dust and cat fur, entirely focused on the reds and blues of the rug. I snapped out of it when the vacuum's sigh subsided just as the song was whispering its last sounds. In the three- or four-second gap before the next track, I heard the sharp, insistent doorbell chime. Like a deaf person who suddenly regains her hearing, I had trouble finding language. (beginning of chapter 1) [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan/all-the-rivers/someone-was-at-the.md) > Although I was exhausted, it took a long time to fall asleep. Hilmi had dropped off long ago, but my mind hummed with the sounds of our time together, unready to let go of them yet. (chapter 13) [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan/all-the-rivers/although-i-was.md) > The hoarseness of my voice echoes in my ears as if from another era: "I have to leave...." (chapter 7) [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan/all-the-rivers/the-hoarseness-of-my-voice.md) > yesterday, in cafés and bars and streets all over town, thousands of other young couples had met, men and women whose paths had crossed and who had spent the weekend together, taking comfort in each other, salving their loneliness in this vast city. That's all, I thought as I sank down and my breathing grew deeper, aligned with his. Just as quickly as it started yesterday, it could be over tomorrow. It could all end with a big hug and a friendly kiss at the door. (chapter 13) [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/dorit-rabinyan/all-the-rivers/yesterday-in-cafes.md)