Quotes from Ahdaf Soueif

I watch and listen, helpless to help. There is no point in saying 'This, too, shall pass.' For a time, we do not even want it to pass. We hold on to grief, fearing that its lifting will be the final betrayal.

Can love grow infinitely? each day I feel my love for him push its roots into my soul. I rest in his arms, so close that I can feel his heartbeat as though it were my own,and I wonder that just four short months ago I did not even know him.

Wonder 'do we - by the same words - mean the same things?

He loves her. Circumstances and considerations - what are those? The whole world recedes and there is room for only one thought: he loves her. She had not misunderstood him. She is not an eccentric and a burden. He has been thinking of her as she has of him. Above her bed the broad fins whirl gently; the night will pass and the morning will come and he loves her.

It's good that I should have to come some way to meet you.

and the thought of relieving my mourning, even slightly, for a moment filled me with a kind of fear.

So at the heart of all things is the germ of their overthrow; the closer you are to the heart, the closer to the reversal. Nowhere to go but down. You reach the core and then you're blown away--

There have been those among us who have been so dazzled by the might and technological wizardy of Europe that they have been rather a man who stands lost in admiration at the gun that is raised to shoot him.

Painting is a kind of visual poetry as poetry is a kind of verbal painting.

If we could shrink the Earth's population to a village of 100 people, with all existing human ratios staying the same, it would look like this: There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Americas and 8 Africans. 80 would live in substandard housing. 70 would be unable to read. 50 would suffer from malnutrition. 50 per cent of the entire world's wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people. And all 6 would be citizens of the United States.

How wonderful to simply do things instead of wondering if they are worth doing or discussing whether to do them or being told not to do them or listening to somebody else describe doing them.

Put football instead of cricket and she could have been me. She could have been Arwa, or Deena or any of the girls I grew up with here in Cairo in the Sixties. What difference do a hundred years — or a continent — make?

The face of all the world is changed, I think Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The air is dry and light and its effect on the mind is similar to that of a glass of Champagne before dinner.

I watch and listen, helpless to help. There is no point in saying "This, too, shall pass," For a time we do not even want it to pass. We hold on to grief, fearing that its lifting will be the final betrayal.

How much is our life governed by the lives and past actions of others?

She wanted nothing to come between her and the rain and the sky.

And Egypt?What is Egypt's strength? Her resilience? Her ability to Her ability to absorb people and events into the pores of her being? Is that true or is it just a consolation? A shifting of responsibility? And if it is true, how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt?

I suppose it has been said that art sometimes benefits from a touch of madness

Palestinian weddings are celebrated over coffee, but when a young man is killed his mother is held up over his grave. 'Trill out your zaghrouda [ululation], his friends say, the shabab who might die tomorrow. A mother says to me: 'Our joy-cries now only ring out in the face of death. Our world is upside down.'" Under the Gun, A Palestinian Journey - MEZZATERRA: FRAGMENTS FROM THE COMMON GROUND

How can it be that a set of the shoulders, the rhythm of a stride, the shadow of a strand of hair falling on a forehead can cause the tides of the heart to ebb and to flow?

It is so pleasant, so deeply peaceful: spending the day with you.

There's a strength in that look, a wilfulness; one would almost call it defiance except that it is so good-humoured. It is the look a woman would wear - would have worn - if she asked a man, a stranger, say, to dance.

We always know how the story ends. What we don't know is what happens along the way.