Marjan Kamali > Quotes

“The past was always there, lurking in the corners, winking at you when you thought you'd moved on, hanging on to your organs from the inside.”
― Marjan Kamali , The Stationery Shop

“She would not have understood, then, that time is not linear but circular. There is no past, present, future. Roya was the woman she was today and the seventeen-year-old girl in the Stationery Shop, always. She and Bahman were one, and she and Walter were united. Kyle was her soul and Marigold would never die.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“You might think the world is complicated and full of lost souls, that people who've touched your life and disappeared will never be found, but in the end all of that can change.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Yes, she loved him. The truth of that was like a wave that washed over and submerged her in salty torrents, knotting her hair and stinging her nose, pulling the life out from under her. Of course she loved him. The earth was round, day turned into night, he was in front of her and she loved him.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She could spend an entire afternoon just looking at fountain pens and ink bottles or flipping through books that spoke of poetry and love and loss.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“When I am surrounded by books, I feel most at peace.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“It is a love from which we never recover.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She pressed her cheek against his heart and lay there, grateful for the time she’d had with him, however short or long it had been, grateful she had known him, grateful that once, when she was young, she had experienced a love so strong that it did not go away, that decades and distance and miles and children and lies and letters could never make it disappear. She held him in her arms and said to him all she needed to say.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“While to our eyes, waves appear suddenly on the shore, their abruptness is an illusion. Waves begin their journey thousands of miles out at sea. They accumulate shape and power from winds and undersea currents for ages. And so, when you see the women in Iran screaming for their rights, please remember that the force and fury of our screams have been gathering power for years.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“The truth is, my young lady, that fate has written the script for your destiny on your forehead from the very beginning. We can't see it. But it's there. And the young, who love so passionately, have no idea how ugly this world is....This world is without compassion.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“That's how losses of rights build. They start small. And then soon, the rights are stripped in droves.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“May you always be happy and may all your days be filled with beautiful words.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

Look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“In your presence, I found a calm.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“It was books. I read and read. Went to the library as much as I could. And to bookstores. Lost myself in books. Did you know that books can heal you? They helped restore me.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“Why doesn’t his heart let go? Why do some people stay lodged in our souls, stuck in our throats, imprinted in our minds?”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She would not have understood, then, that time is not linear but circular. There is no past, present, future. Roya was the woman she was today and the seventeen-year-old girl in the Stationery Shop, always. She and Bahman were one, and she and Walter were united. Kyle was her soul and Marigold would never die. The past was always there, lurking in the corners, winking at you when you thought you'd moved on, hanging on to your organs from the inside.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She knew how to swing her legs on that hyphen that defined and denied who she was: Iranian-American. Neither the first word nor the second really belonged to her. Her place was on the hyphen and on the hyphen she would stay, carrying memories of the one place from which she had come and the other place in which she must succeed. The hyphen was hers-- a space small, and potentially precarious. On the hyphen she would sit, and on the hyphen she would stand, and soon, like a seasoned acrobat, she would balance there perfectly, never falling, never choosing either side over the other, content with walking that thin line.”
― Marjan Kamali, Together Tea

“She found too much cheer undesirable, smacking of falseness. How did Americans keep up their good spirits day in, day out, year-round? It had to be the brand-shiny-newness of their country. It had to be all that freedom. No thousands of years' worth of stultifying rules to observe. Just easy-peasy rolling with the flow.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Lionesses. Us. Can't you just see it Ellie? Someday, you and me — we'll do great things. We'll live life for ourselves. And we will help others. We are cubs now, maybe. But we will grow to be lionesses. Strong women who will make things happen.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“Ocean waves begin their journey thousands of miles out at sea. Their form, size, and shape come from the speed of prevailing winds in the atmosphere, the power of currents hidden beneath the sea, and their “long fetch”—the distance between a wave’s point of origin and its point of arrival… Events that seem to appear in the present from out of nowhere in actuality have a long history behind them. George Lipsitz, Footsteps in the Dark Part One”
― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered. F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“And then. We lost touch.
Our bond should have been impossible to fray and then disintegrate. But as time took us each in a different direction, it was astonishingly simple for our connection to dissolve.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“He laughed. And when he did, his face opened up entirely. His eyes carried the laughter; they filled with a kindness that was breathtaking.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“I recently read a theory about ocean waves. This theory says that while to our eyes waves appear suddenly on the shore, their abruptness is an illusion. Waves begin their journey thousands of miles out at sea. They accumulated shape and power from winds and undersea currents for ages. And so when you see the women screaming in Iran for their rights, please remember, dear Leily, that the force and fury of our screams have been gathering power for years.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“In the fog of jasmine, she kissed him. It was like landing somewhere she should have been all along, a different plane, soft and unbelievably seductive—a place completely theirs but one she’d never dared explore.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Roya’s favorite place in all of Tehran was the Stationery Shop. It was on the corner of Churchill Street and Hafez Avenue, opposite the Russian embassy and right across the street from her school.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“The past was always there, lurking in the corners, winking at you when you thought you’d moved on, hanging on to your organs from the inside.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop