Quotes from Monica Ali

If you think you are powerless, then you are

You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth between your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved (page 87).

And so they entwined their lives to drink from the pools of each other's sadness. From these special watering holes, each man drew strength.

The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful

Her words were as sharp as an eyeful of sand. She never raised her voice. It was the kind of voice that never needed to be raised. It cut words to a fine point and launched them decisively (page 88).

They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug

I don't know which is more nutty. All this stuff I do outside of work, or the stuff I do all week.

Life made its pattern around and beneath and through her.

The boys wore jeans, or tracksuits with big ticks on them as if their clothing had been marked by a teacher who valued, above all else, conformity.

I can't stay," said Chanu, and they clung to each other inside a sadness that went beyond words and tears, beyond that place, those causes and consequences, and became a part of their breath, their marrow, to travel with them from now to wherever they went.

If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men.

Tevis being childless meant you felt a little sorry for her, and a bit jealous. Probably the same way she felt about you.

She had another English word. She carried it all the way down the corridor.

Kadang keadaan ternyata tidak seburuk yang disangka. Kadang-kadang hal buruk yang disangka akan datang malah tidak datang sama sekali. Kalian hanya harus menunggu dan melihat keadaan.

If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men (page 80).

He would not come again. This was good. No. This was bad. At least it was an end.

Chanu spoke loudly, he weighed his words like gold and threw them about like a fool.

An hour and forty-five minutes before Nazneen's life began-began as it would proceed for quite some time, that is to say uncertainly-her mother, Rupban, felt an iron fist squeeze her belly.

Spreading rumours is our national past time

In the only way that pain can be truly remembered, through a new pain.

In the rainy season, back home, when the land had given way to water and the buffaloes grew webbed feet, when the hens took to the roofs, when marooned goats teetered on minuscule islands, when the women splashed across on the raised walkway to the cooking hut and found they could no longer kindle a dung-and-husk fire and looked to their reserves, when the rain rang louder than cow bells, rice was the means, the giver of life.

Gabe, did you pray?' 'Sort of.' 'Me too. Do you believe?' 'No. Do you?' 'No.' 'I don't believe,' said Gabriel, 'But I have faith, if you know what I mean.' 'What in?' 'I don't know, life, carrying on, I suppose.' 'Yes.

while she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.