Quotes from Nadeem Aslam

There are times in this life when a person must do or say things he doesn't want to. Human beings and chains, it is the oldest acquaintanceship in the world.

As a writer, my homeland is the desk where I work.

Pull a thread here and you'll find it's attached to the rest of the world.

Women joked amongst themselves: 'Why do you think a bride cries on her wedding day? It's for the love that this marriage is putting an end to for all eternity. Men may think a woman has no past- "you were born and then I married you"- but men are fools.

On the journey towards the beloved, you live by dying at every step.

There are times in this life when a person must do or say things he doesn't want to. Human beings and chains, it is the oldest acquaintanceship in the world.

Nothing is an accident: it's always someone's fault; perhaps-but no one teaches us how to live with our mistakes. Everyone is isolated, alone with his or her anguish and guilt, and too penetrating a question can mean people are not able to face one another the next day.

There is nothing that torments Satan more than the sight of a faithful in prayer.

The neighbourhood is a place of...intrigue and emotional espionage, where when two people stop to talk on the street, their tongues are like the two halves of a scissor coming together, cutting reputations and good names to shreds.

A lie does not become truth just because ten people are telling it.

The bullet that has hit us Muslims today left the gun centuries ago when we let the clergy decide that knowledge and education were not important.

All those who love know exactly the limit they're prepared to go to. They know exactly what is required.

All great artists know that part of their task is to light up the distance between two human beings.

Pakistan produces people of extraordinary bravery. But no nation should ever require its citizens to be that brave.

There are no innocent people in a guilty nation.

Paper is the strongest material in the world. Things under which a mountain will crumble, you can place on paper and it will hold: beauty at its most intense; love at its fiercest; the greatest grief; the greatest rage.

Her mind is a haunted house.

Love was the result of having caught a glimpse of another's loneliness.

History is the third parent.

The young everywhere…would prefer to live in houses that consist only of doors.

Even the air of this country has a story to tell about warfare. It is possible here to lift a piece of bread from a plate and following it back to its origins, collect a dozen stories concerning war-how it affected the hand that pulled it out of the oven, the hand that kneaded the dough, how war impinged upon the field where wheat was grown.

To visit certain streets was to realise that only the sky remained unchanged there.

Wounds are said to emit light under certain conditions - touch them and the brightness will stay on the hands - and as candles burn Rohan thinks of each flame as an injury somewhere in his house.

God is just a name for our wonder.