Quotes from Hanan Al-Shaykh

I don't want to turn into one of those pathetic creatures who are always homesick, always saying I wish I were still in Beirut. I don't want to become like you, split between here and there. I know I'm not happy here, but why should I be unhappy in two countries?

Surely you know that pleasure soon evaporates, into thin air? Then all we are left with are stories.

Just remember what Satan says: I teach men what I learn from women!

But were they Israeli planes dropping leaflets from the sky, or "flights of birds striking us with stones of baked clay" as if we were Ethiopians threatening Mecca in the Qur'an?

Like the hostages, I can't find any excuses for my jailers, even if some of them are rootless exiles. They change continuously as if there's a factory producing new versions all the time. They're like nouns and verbs ungoverned by rules, indeclinable, or arithmetical problems where numbers and logic interweave and every time the teacher and the student think of solving them together their brain cells

One should never act on what one hears from others, but seek and discover the truth for himself.