Deborah Rodriguez > Quotes

“Women are like tea bags; you never know how strong they are until they’re put in hot water. — ELEANOR ROOSEVELT”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop Of Kabul

“People, even those closest to you, are surprising...Nobody is everything they seem.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, A Cup of Friendship

“It was as if you could see into the sky, through it's layers and into it's core. Layers of stars, translucent blanket upon blanket. The beauty was overwhelming. The wind blew her hair, and she willed herself to stop, to breathe, to feel.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, A Cup of Friendship

“Look what love does...This was the real Islam, the Islam of love, not hate. Muhammad would be proud.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, A Cup of Friendship

“She wasn't sure who were family & who were friends, and maybe they all were both, and maybe it didn't matter one bit.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, A Cup of Friendship

“The eyes of a man betrayed his heart.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop Of Kabul

“It is the power of a girl with a book that is the best weapon for progress”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“I am rich, thank you very much. And you are excused for being shortsighted. It is Americans, you British, and all the other Westerners who think they know what's right and what's wrong, who make money from the sale of heroin and opium with one hand, and yet pay mullahs to preach that growing poppies is against the Koran with the other." He laughed. "Hypocrites all!”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“These new people were her people. So what that she'd only recently met these women. In their hearts they were all the same: women yearning for rich lives, someone to love & someone to love them in return, friends to laugh with, drink with & cry with.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, A Cup of Friendship

“There is nothing the Americans can do. Their presence here only fuels the fire of the Taliban hatred. It's as if everybody thinks that Afghans are theirs for the taking. It's as if we're not real people with hearts and minds of our own. It's as if we're animals who need humans to shape us. By Muhammad, I know that if more of us had some education and could read, we would be a mighty force. We could rule our own lives.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, A Cup of Friendship

“I was tired. Tired of men, tired of moving, tired of being scared, tired of being confused. But who was I kissing? I'm not one to sit quietly, anywhere.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Margarita Wednesdays: Making a New Life by the Mexican Sea

“The moon is made round by the right hand of God.
The moon is made crescent by His left.
But it is God’s heart that makes my love for you forever.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“It is the power of a girl with a book that is the best weapon for progress. (...) Because with educated women comes prosperity. And with our voices comes mercy. And with our strength comes change.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“As simple as a fish, she thought. That’s how life should be. Jumping cause you can. If only.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“It was almost as if she was still the bewildred girl of fourteen who wasn't ready to be an adult.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil

“Shame does something to a man. It makes him forget those he loves. It makes a good man do bad things.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“Maybe life isn’t about being one way or the other. Perhaps the answers we are looking for come from everywhere–our faith, our brains, and our hearts.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Zanzibar Wife

“screamed and jumped out of the”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Kabul Beauty School

“himself up, and everything around him, two streets away.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop Of Kabul

“Like they say, there is a way from heart to heart. And it was true.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“I was working second shift and weekends, never seeing my children, and I felt like I was selling my soul to the devil for health insurance and paid vacations.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil

“A vida muda num instante.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Uma Pequena Casa de Chá em Cabul

“from Rumi. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“The only thing that makes the Afghan cry is war and hunger and losing an arm in a blast, and...people who think only about themselves. I am sorry, Miss Sunny, to talk to you this way. But there is a wise old Western saying that sums it all up: Shit happens. Excuse me, you are the boss, after all, but you Americans, I hear you talk in the coffeehouse every day and every night, revealing your personal problems. You expect so much, you feel that you deserve good things to come your way, and yet you understand so little. Afghanistan is hard and not only hard for you foreigners. You can leave and get a job and see a doctor and go to college and buy whatever you want. We are trapped here always. You whine and moan over little things, and we're the ones who have to clean up after you.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“So that is why the extremists try to keep girls from going to school? That is the reason we are poisoned and beaten, and our teachers threatened and killed?”
― Deborah Rodriguez, Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“and”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“clacked on the marble-tiled floors, one of the many improvements Sunny made to her house. What little men they”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“Women are like tea bags; you never know how strong
they are until they’re put in hot water. —ELEANOR ROOSEVELT”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

“You will find that thing that makes you unafraid to die. That important thing that makes your life of value.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop Of Kabul

“the bathroom down the hall, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, not knowing whom she’d run into and when. Indoor plumbing seemed unnecessary anyway. Getting water from the well and using the outdoor toilet was easy enough. But that shower, now that was a thing of beauty! She took the brush from the cabinet and let loose her single braid, as thick and long as the grasses that stood by the river back home. She shook her head so that her black hair fell loose, then brushed it, slowly and carefully, treating it as if every inch held a story. One stroke and then another, until it was smooth and silky, like the pajamas she slept in. They were different from the ones she wore at home, which she had made for herself. The stitching was too regular, too perfect to have been made by a young woman’s hand. Obviously, they were made by machine, like everything in Kabul. When Sunny had presented the room to her, she had been particularly proud of the full-length mirror that was framed in a shiny dark wood and sat on its own four legs. But Yazmina thought of it as vanity and had turned it away once Sunny had departed. Today, though, she turned it to face her. She put her hands on her stomach, where the life inside was growing with each new day, and looked at herself. She pulled the sleeping gown over her head, removed her undergarments, and there was her body, which she was seeing naked, in full, for the first time in her life. She was slim, her legs long and lean, her right leg still red and scraped from knee to thigh where she had fallen on the pebbled road when she was pushed out of the car. Her arms were slender but muscled from daily chores, still bruised by the rough grip of strong hands. She looked at her breasts, which were larger than usual because of her condition, but nothing like the long, low ones of Halajan, the old busybody who lived next door to the café and had an opinion about everything. Yazmina thought that woman had been sent by God himself to test her patience. No, Yazmina’s breasts were still “as glowing and round as the midnight moon,” as Najam used to tell her. She saddened at the memory of her husband’s face, his kisses and his touch. She would never feel such sweetness again. But she was with his baby. She turned to the side to look at her belly and stroked it with her two hands. She took a deep breath as if the air would give her all she and her baby needed to thrive. This will be my baby, she thought, my Najam, or if a girl, Inshallah, God willing, Najama (for Yazmina was convinced it was a girl, perhaps because it was Najam’s wish to have many children—a son or two, of course, but also a daughter who had the same light in her eyes as Yazmina). Not only would the baby be named after her father, but she would be a star lighting up the night sky, as the name meant. Najam’s seed was part of her, and she would cherish it and die trying to protect it.”
― Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul