White Teeth Quotes
"Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it' it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing – how am I to put it? – which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it forever."
"If you think you have found two men the same amongst that multitude, then you are mistaken. It is merely a trick of the moonlight."
"We are creatures of consequence, Archibald. Our actions will define us."
"Every time I learn something more about him, I like him less. So you see, we were better off the way we were."
"Our accidents will become their destinies. Our actions will remain."
"You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain."
"I am not a waiter. I have been a student, a scientist, a soldier, my wife is called Alsana, we live in East London but we would like to move North. I am a Muslim but Allah has forsaken me or I have forsaken Allah, I'm not sure."
"For a marriage to survive, you don't need all this talk, talk, talk; what is not said is the very best recipe for family life."
"Men are the last mystery. God is easy compared with men."
"Getting anything out of my husband is like trying to squeeze water out when you're stoned."
"Not everybody wants to see into everybody else's sweaty, secret parts."
"You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair."
"I am certain I do not know to what you are referring."
"Sometimes we find other people's music strange because their culture is different from ours."
"I am a Muslim and a Man and a Son and a Believer. I will survive the last days."
"The truth is, this was my fate. This was all written for me long ago."
"We’re impostors; turncoats in other people’s coats."
"It’s not a line, life is not a line – it's a circle, and they speak to us."
"The moment Samad set eyes on the pretty red-haired music teacher Poppy Burt-Jones, he knew finally the truth of this."
"One sometimes forgets the significance of one’s teeth."
"Clean white teeth are not always wise, now are they?"
"Those are the split decisions you make in war."
"Have them out and brush three times a day, if my advice means anything."
"You can’t fight against it. I wish I’d given up early and hedged my bets, as it were."
Satyagraha. It is Sanskrit for "truth and firmness".
"I am certain, I don’t have the kind you like."
"What’s wrong with a load of people making some noise about their freedom?"
"I don’t need to read it. The relevant passages have been photocopied for me."
"I don’t wash it! If you wan’ it straight, don’ wash it!"
"I just had a haircut. What’s the big deal?"
"He learns nothing from a man who knows nothing! Where is his beard? Where is his khamise? Where is his humility? If Allah says there will be storm, there will be storm. If he says earthquake, it will be earthquake. Of course it has to be! That is the very reason I sent the child there – to understand that essentially we are weak, that we are not in control."
"But we, we do not automatically obey. We are tricky, we are the tricky bastards, we humans. We have the evil inside us, the free will. We must learn to obey. That is what I sent the child Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal to discover."
"You have to let them make their own mistakes..."
"Laborare est Orare: Nerds by the pond, checking out frog sex, Posh girls in the music department singing French rounds, speaking pig Latin, going on grape diets, suppressing lesbian instincts, Fat boys in the PE corridor, wanking..."
"Truth was truth to a Chalfen. And Genius was genius."
"You guys go so far back, it's incredible. I can't imagine what that must feel like."
"You eliminate the random, you rule the world."
"The idea of them. She just didn’t get it."
"That’s why he made a hol’ heap a fuss about the children of men building the tower of Babel."
"He taught her how to read the trials of Job and study the warnings of Revelation."
"But the Lord ain’t interested in the vanities of the flesh, now, is he Mrs B.?"
"It’s a grand old family, and if you don’t find it too presumptuous, I like to think of Irie as a kind of addition to it, in a way."
"No, indeed. He got me dis little buggy."
"Nuttin’ changes about the word of God, Only people are mistaken."
"I’ve waited fifty years to do someting else in de Kingdom Hall except clean."
"He taught her that she was no longer a maidservant, that her education had elevated her."
"A little English education can be a dangerous thing."
First I have to keep her from those Chalfens," growls Clara over the phone, her voice a resonant tremolando of anger and fear. "And now you people again.
"Hortense, I don’t want you filling her head with a whole load of nonsense. You hear me? Your mother was fool to it, and then you were fool to it, but the buck stopped with me and it ain’t going no further."
"But how fragile is Clara’s atheism! Like one of those tiny glass doves Hortense keeps in the lounge cabinet – a breath would knock it over."
"I’ll be back when I’m back, just don’t worry about me."
"Talking of which, Clara still holds hers when passing churches the same way adolescent vegetarians scurry by butchers."
"Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It’s the last stop on the nutso express."
"The Witness church is where my roots are. It bin good to me when nobody else has."
"You see him more than we do. How’s God?"
"You make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started… but you mean to go back!"
"And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie."
I’ve only ever had those boys’ welfare at heart, you of all people should know that. They need help. I just walked past the bathroom and Magid is sitting in the bath with his jeans on. Yes. All right? Now," said Joyce, "I should think I know a traumatized child when I see one.
"He wants me to join Keepers of the Eternal and-"
"But why don’t you worry about your own family for once? Just for a change. What about Josh?"
"The fact is both these boys have serious emotional problems and it’s not helped by Millat refusing to see Magid. It upsets him so much."
"You claim to want to help my boys, but you have done nothing but drive a wedge between them. It is too late now. I have lost my family. Why don’t you go back to yours and leave us alone?"
"You think it’s paradise over at my house? My family has been split by this too. Joshua isn’t speaking to Marcus."
"But Magid is only living with us because Millat won’t live with him here. And Magid tells me your husband can barely stand the sight of him."
Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim Iqbal," said Magid serenely. "It is a great honour to meet you, Michael. I have heard such a great deal about you.
"I don’t wish to take from your valuable time, but it is a matter of some urgency. I am confused."
"If you could see your face in that. Now. Where were we?"
"My father’s heart will not be broken by a bacon sandwich."
"No, I will not steady on! This boy is a thorn in my foot."
"I am perfectly willing to meet with him, Abba. If he will meet with me."
"You are so bloody clever, aren’t you? Mr Smarty-pants."
"Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time."
"I’d be a terrible liar, on my mother’s life, I would."
"The world happens to you, you don’t happen to the world."
"No question about who was pulling the strings. No doubtful omnipotence."
"The harder Achilles tries to catch the tortoise, the more eloquently the tortoise expresses its advantage."
"They are running at a standstill. Zeno’s Paradox."
"He will take an animal – an animal that Allah has created – and presume to change that creation."
"It seems to me that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked."
"I think,’ said Millat, ‘I am going to vomit."
"They do love their false icons in this country."
"Because they look to their future to forget their past."
"They have no faith, the English. They believe in what men make, but what men make crumbles."
"It meant I wanted to write my name on the world."
"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
"All human endeavour ultimately meaningless, and no advancement in this world worth making besides gaining God’s favour."
"No thought could have been more apt for the day ahead."
"He who would valiant be, 'gainst all disaster!"
"The world might end tomorrow for all I know. But I’ve got to do this now."
"At the end of the day, he’ll do the one he cares about more."
"Man makes himself, after all. And he is responsible for what he makes."
"At the end of the day, you know I’ve always been your cutting-edge type of geezer."
"It’s a messy business, this saving people lark."
"It seems no matter what you think of them, they must be played, even if, like the independence of India or Jamaica, like the signing of peace treaties or the docking of passenger boats, the end is simply the beginning of an even longer story."
"But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to speed the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect."
"Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories."