Brick Lane Quotes
"What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne. This principle ruled her life."
"By the light of day, and by the dark of night, your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He abhor you."
"The life to come holds a richer prize for you than this present life. You shall be gratified with what your Lord will give you."
"Did He not find you an orphan and give you shelter?"
"But the pain in her knee and her hands and her ankle destroyed the verses."
"She had spoken, in English, to a stranger, and she had been understood and acknowledged. It was very little. But it was something."
"She was cold, she was tired, she was in pain, she was hungry and she was lost."
"Sometimes we just have to wait and see. Sometimes that's all we can do."
"If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men."
"Assimilation this, alienation that! Let me tell you a few simple facts."
"If you ask for nothing, you might get nothing!"
"Behind every story of immigrant success there lies a deeper tragedy."
"Be an architect. Be a designer. Be a rocket scientist."
"For the love of God! Get your friends some drinks."
"I have studied at a British university – philosophy, sociology, history, economics. I do not claim to be a learned gentleman. But I can tell you truthfully, madam, that I am always learning."
"The world had rearranged itself around this new core."
"He was the centre. Without him, life would not be possible."
"The city itself was just a glow on the dark earth."
"In prayer she sought to stupefy herself like a drunk with a bottle."
"She was as still as a mongoose entranced by a snake."
"Every dark imagining had come upon them, and their eyes and lips were pinched by shock."
"God knows everything. He knows the number of hairs on your head."
"He sees you. Don’t forget. He knows the number of hairs on your head."
"She realized with some amazement that, while she had knelt, she had never fully engaged in them."
"God decided. She thought about How You Were Left To Your Fate."
"Somewhere, behind walls, a woman shouted in indistinct anguish."
"If it possible to hate bricks, I hating them."
"Nature reject these things. What chance he has?"
"Do not despair of the mercy of God for Allah forgives all sins. He is the Compassionate the Merciful."
"All times I making mistakes, all times I going off from straight Path and He is giving chance again and then again."
"I have your letter. So much I want from it that I feel to eat it and make part of me."
"All my life I look for one thing only for love for giving and getting and it seem such a thing full of danger can eat you alive."
"She wear robe colour like ripe peach not yet dress because of late entertaining."
"If I stop wearing this now, they are going to think I listen to them."
"Let them talk. If they have the time, let them gossip."
"But I wish he would go out sometimes and make a few friends. I told him to go to mosque and make friends but he wouldn’t go."
"‘OK-Ma, I am lucky. But I wish he would go out sometimes and make a few friends."
"It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full."
"Each life is no more than a blade of grass on this lawn."
"In between the sheets, in between his arms, she took her pleasure desperately, as if the executioner waited behind the door."
"God tests us. Don't you know this life is a test?"
"She must get as much as possible. Make as safe as possible."
"Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Every day of my life I have prepared for success, waited for it, and you don’t notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime has finished."
"I always respect a professional opinion, unless, of course, you disagree with it."
"For so many years, all the permanent fixtures of her life had felt so temporary."
"Nazneen breathed air that was choked with things unsaid."
"She was aware of her body, as though just now she had come to inhabit it for the first time."
"She wanted everything: to vanish inside the heat like a drop of dew."
"Only the warmth of his body radiating into hers."
"She brought him a glass of water. She brought him some dates."
"Maybe it’s, like, time I got to know them."
"It don’t have to be a negative thing. It can be positive."
"‘He has to want to be cured,’ said the doctor."
"You see, when we go there, what will you lose? Happiness."
"I wish I wasnt beautiful. I wish I didnt have all this beauty and nothing to be done with it."
"If he tries to get me on an aeroplane, I’ll bite his hand and run."
"‘Anything is possible so everything I wanted was possible,’ said Chanu."
"‘The thing about getting older,’ said Chanu, ‘is that you don’t need everything to be possible any more, you just need some things to be certain.’"
"‘First you must choose which one will die,’ said the jinni."
"‘It is only now you have decided to listen to me,’ said the jinni."
"Everyone came to look and advise. Take the child to a hospital, they said, or she will be dead by morning."
"We open a book, we turn a newspaper page, we allow the television and the radio to come into our homes. All the things we are told every day – are they true?"
"Nazneen began to understand: how much she had lightened his load."
"What kept her tied to the corner of the room? ‘The children are not going,’ said Nazneen."
"But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn’t me, and you weren’t you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn’t see things. What we did – we made each other up."
"‘Whenever God decides, I am ready,’ she rasped."
"‘Don’t think I wasn’t watching you,’ Amma snapped. ‘You thought it was you who had the power. You thought you would keep him alive. You decided you would be the one to choose.’"
"You modern girls. You’ll do what you like."
"You could reach out and pluck it like a sitar string."
"A blister of paint from the metal banister came off on Nazneen’s hand."
"Nazneen walked around the courtyard and into the centre of Dogwood."
"The air was dense with curry smells, but not a single body in the courtyard."
"‘Good, good,’ said the doctor. ‘Excellent,’ he added, having considered the matter thoroughly."
"Nazneen resisted the urge to reach over and undo a button."
"She is still there. In a manner of speaking."
"Because he is my friend. My very good friend."
"Sometimes the bad things that you think are coming don’t come at all. You just have to wait and see."
"‘Can’t get mangoes from the amra tree,’ he said."
"That for both of them the time had gone and it was too late now, too late."
"It was lucky for me that my father chose an educated man."
"She wondered if she would keep the rugs or throw them away."
"My wife, tidying up! And making more trouble for herself."
"It was as if a couple of blocks of flats had been tipped on their side."
"Islam could be about Islam. But I don’t think so. I don’t think it is."
"‘I haven’t been what you could call a perfect-type husband,’ he told his knees."
"She had no middleman, no contact for the factory, no work for her needle."
"‘This is England,’ she said. ‘You can do whatever you like.’"