Celestial Bodies Quotes
"When you were utterly quiet and still you were likeliest to hear accurately what others were saying."
"Sleep was her only paradise. It was her ultimate weapon against the pounding anxiety of her existence."
"Life appeared to her sharply divided in two parts, like night and day: what we live, and what lives inside of us."
"If I were to just put my hand out, I felt, I could touch those matchless haloes ever so gently."
"I dislike fake smiles as strongly as I do laughter."
"A human hand spread wide can’t block the sun outside."
"On the Day of Judgement it will be known that your tongue has created no complaint against you."
"In the moonlight she looked like he imagined an houri of Paradise must look, those women of heaven above."
"Ever since I saw him that evening, sitting with the others, talking and laughing, I knew this man would be Qamar’s."
"The night before – once I made certain that my father was asleep – I had snuck out to the eastern courtyard to sit under the enormous acacia tree where I could give myself up to the beautiful wailing of Suwayd’s oud and his welcome company."
"Twenty-three years later when she would smash her daughter’s mobile phone to bits in anger before slapping her across the face, the only remaining traces of resemblance were their brown skin and wiry frames."
"I like the idea of being so high that gravity loses its power over me, as I stare down at the clouds."
"How could she possibly marry the issue of the man who had threshed the family’s grain?"
"The clouds today are very thick, impenetrable."
"Suddenly she asked, How about we go down to the shore at Sib?"
"You don’t understand anything about commerce!"
"It’s not Hanan. Even though, you know, her family refused to go to court about the rape because they were afraid of the scandal, and she gave in to them."
"This anger – this rage that comes every time I picture her face as she talked, sitting there in the car."
"I felt the same helpless anger when the nurse took out the tubes from my father’s body, her way of announcing he was dead."
"Suddenly, I was that lone child of so long ago, whom Sanjar and Marhun forced to steal the rifle and then deprived of eating any magpies."
"Thank you, my bright-faced air hostess. The orange cake is truly delicious."
"Whenever it came to that, my hopes would completely vanish."
"Give Maneen a few grains of rice, just a little handful!"
"Years later, when his eyesight was gone and his teeth falling out, Maneen joined in at the zar exorcisms."
"People had grown very tired of hearing her scream and finally she was freed."
"I guarded myself from what would soil my self and held myself above the paltry offerings of the scoundrel."
"He beats her? She said he beats her? The peasant’s son beats my daughter, mine?"
"The teenagers laugh and shout and open their cans of cola, the sea breeze grows colder, and I drive on the way back to al-Khuwayr."
"But Masouda hadn’t set foot in any of these spaces for a long time."
"She would lay down with him though then she would leave him on his own."
"His mouth crammed with jelly-sweets, chuckles, and saliva, Maneen repeats the same old story I have heard a thousand times."
"You are a successful physician and you have your freedom and a good social life and he doesn’t deserve even a stray thought."
"What was written on the tiny forehead of this new little creature?"
"I am not a boy any longer! I screamed my rage in his direction."
"WAllahi wAllahi wAllahi! May my throat be slit, my neck carved like a lamb, sliver by sliver, if my family insists on marrying me to the son of Emigrant Issa."
"He would tell me, Don’t turn around, and don’t get out of the car, there are young guys running around in shorts here, don’t open the window and don’t look out."
"I didn’t feel angry when I learned, long after the event, that Zarifa had died."
"He beats her? The peasant’s son beats my girl?"
"We are free. They stole us, and then they sold us!"
"Neither exertion nor acceptance can I claim to possess, only a mere affinity in which I find my pride."
"The reach of my passion! May that craving be cured by the sweetness of that which my lips do absorb."
"The earth was concealed to me yet I saw its east and its west both."
"Your radiance outdoes the brightest sun there be: it can never thieve your smile, steal your pearly mouth."
"My head is under water. This headache lays into me every time I have to fly."
"People are always apart, Najiya, they're separate in the end, even when they think they're one."
"Life goes on. Where Ahmad’s concerned, just hit Delete, okay?"
"The longing to know things consumes people sometimes."
"I stake my word on the desert gazelle and what she’s free of – no slur in her speech nor pencilled-on eyebrows."
"People are not simply unmade halves who find their other halves and miraculously become whole."
"Art and imagination are alike in that way. They give some kind of worth to my existence."
"We may live here but we’re not from here. We won’t leave anything of ourselves here."
"When the moon moves closer to another celestial body then it gives more force to whatever that body can tell us or give us."
"Every person in this world will be served in the afterlife what she served others in this life."
"My soul is free, completely free, like a dove in the sky."
"How liberated a person feels when it’s finally no longer a question of being just an extension or embodiment of someone else’s fancy."
"Love is dreams, marriage is for real: life, responsibility, children. No illusions."
"The years dragged all of those words behind them and when the words tried to take root on her burdened back, the stony ground there threw them off."
"I walked down to the water. The waves were welling up, and I went in up to my chest. When I opened my arms Muhammad slipped away like a fish."