Quotes from Camilla Gibb

I marvelled at her capabilities as a mother - naturally empathic but no pushover, funny and generous, frank about her own limitations and the challenges of parenting, loving and affectionate but unsentimental - absolutely solid in her role.

HOw do you protect a child from heartbreak? All I know is the egg wants to be held all the time, and perhaps if I hold her all the time she will know that she is loved in such a fundamental and profound way that when her heart is broken as an adult, she will not fall apart, will know that she is still loved and lovable.

You would fancy any man who gave you baklava, I tease. You think I am some kind of sharmuta for sweets?

I suspect we can all be domesticated by love, but when love is threatened or broken, our suspicions and mistrust are confirmed. Experience has made us this way.........Because if you believe in what's promised, if you become invested, you take the risk of a broken heart.

Girls are not passive by nature. They are only so because the culture demands they be.

I've tried to read, but I can't make it through more than a paragraph at a time. The floor is littered with abandoned newspapers and yogurt pots.

Ethiopia doesn't matter to the West," I say, stating the obvious. "We offer them nothing they can exploit.

My body is a whisper where hers is a shout.

Believing that all has been ordained by God can lead to fatalism, but fatalism is not the same thing as belief. It's a cheat: an abdication of responsibility.

We were ashes to ashes fascinated by this movement, heaven bound invariably, for there is no hell anymore when it has arrived here on earth.

The best we can do is knot these threads at the ends so they won't unravel any further.

Every evening for weeks, Amina and the several other Ethiopians who lived in the building by then crowded into my flat to watch in horror as a parade of bodies on the verge of crumbling into dust crawled across the screen. We were sickened with ourselves for being riveted by the spectacle of this death march. We were ashes to ashes fascinated by this movement, heaven bound invariably, for there is no hell anymore when it has arrived here on earth.

The sound of communal prayer—its growling honesty, its rhythm as relentless and essential as heartbeats—moves me with its direction and makes me believe that distance can be overcome. It is the only thing that offers me hope that where borders and wars and revolutions divide and scatter us, something singular and true unites us. It tames this English soil.

We know plenty of Ethiopians in London who do not even furnish their flats. What possessions they acquire sit in their cardboard boxes ready for transport. The tower of boxes holding televisions, toaster ovens, microwaves, electric heaters teeters to the left of the door, ready to be shipped at a moment's notice. They commit to nothing. They float on the myth of return.

It felt like betrayal, but in truth it was simply Muhammed Bruce's lament for the passing of an era. A time when Europeans had roamed the earth in pursuit of adventure, largely oblivious to the lives and laws of the people in the countries they picked through like cherries. Spitting out the pits. Just like my parents. They had stomped on the world like the Burtons of their era, only worse somehow because they did not think that their shoes left marks.

Amina has boundless empathy for everyone but her husband, it seems. How is it that disappointment arrives as soon as what you have desired for so long steps over the threshold? It's like finding the end of your wedding train dragging behind in the mud.

They need to believe in something closer than God, because God often feels too distant." He was right: the saints offer us a ladder to reach Him more easily. "And they bring people together," I contributed. He nodded. "They do. Or at least belief in them does." "One and the same," I said, sounding much more certain than I felt.

Why didn't they go back to India?" "Oh, you know how it is. Once you are outside a place you can never go back. Not really.