Safaa Sabeur > Safaa's Quotes

“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“Je pense souvent à cette image que je suis seule à voir encore et dont je n’ai jamais parlé. Elle est toujours là dans le même silence,émerveillante. C’est entre toutes celle qui me plaît de moi-même, celle où je me reconnais, où je m’enchante.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Stories

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn't understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“Je me souviens mal des jours. L’éclairement solaire ternissait les couleurs, écrasait. Des nuits, je me souviens.Le bleu était plus loin que le ciel, il était derrière toutes les
épaisseurs, il recouvrait le fond du monde. Le ciel, pour moi, c’était cette traînée de pure brillance qui traverse le bleu, cette fusion froide au-delà de toute couleur.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“لا تكتبي لي جوابا ...لا تكترثي ، لا تقولي شيئا . إنني أعود إليك مثلما يعود اليتيم إلى ملجأه الوحيد ، و سأظل أعود : أعطيكِ رأسي المبتل لتجففيه بعد أن اختار الشقي أن يسير تحت المزاريب .”
― غسان كنفاني, رسائل غسان كنفاني إلى غادة السمان

“Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“ألا يقول الله
{ وَنَحْنُ أَقْرَبُ إِلَيْهِ مِنْ حَبْلِ الْوَرِيدِ }
فالله لا يقبع بعيداً في السموات العالية ، بل يقبع في داخل كل منا
لذلك فهو لا يتخلى عنا ، فكيف له أن يتخلى عن نفسه؟”
― إليف شافاق, The Forty Rules of Love

“توجد مرحلة تخذلنا اللغة بعدها”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“النسيان شكل من أشكال الحرية”
― جبران خليل جبران, رمل وزبد

“على قدر حلمك تتسع الأرض”
― محمود درويش

“ساحلم لا لاصلح اي معنى خارجي
بل كي ارمم داخلي المهجور
من اثر الجفاف العاطفي ،،
حفظت قلبي كله عن ظهر قلب ،،
لم يعد متطفلا ومدللا
تكفيه حبة(اسبرين)كي يلين ويستكين”
― محمود درويش, جدارية

“أتمنى لكِ اليأس يا حبيبتي؛ لكي تصيرين مبدعة. اليائسون هم المبدعون، لا تنتظريني ولا تنتظري أحدًا. انتظري الفكرة، لا تنتظري المفكّر. انتظري القصيدة، ولا تنتظري الشاعر. انتظري الثورة، ولا تنتظري الثائر. المفكّر يخطئ، والشاعر يكذب، والثائر يتعب.”
― محمود درويش, يوميات الحزن العادي

“Once again there was the desert, and that only.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“I asked him if it were a mirage, and he said yes. I said it was a dream, and he agreed, But said it was the desert's dream not his. And he told me that in a year or so, when he had aged enough for any man, then he would walk into the wind, until he saw the tents. This time, he said, he would go on with them.”
― Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions

“La faim n'empêche pas les enfants de jouer.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Sea Wall

“لم تنتظر أحداً
مشيتَ على رصيفك سادراً
ومشيتُ خلفك حائراً.
والشمسُ غابت خلفنا...
ودَنوْتَ مني خطوةً أو خطوتين
فلم تجدني واقفاً أو ماشياً
ودَنوتُ منك فلم أجدك...

أكنتُ وحدي دون أن أدري
بأني كنت وحدي؟ لم تقل
إحدى النساء : هناك شخصٌ ما
يطارد نفسَهُ!”
― محمود درويش, أثر الفراشة

“Every real story is a never ending story.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“C'était là le point faible de cette vie, le seul définitif: on ne spécule pas sur son enfant.On croit couver un petit aigle et il vous sort de dessous le bureau un serin. Et qu'y faire? Quel recours a-t-on contre ce sort d'injuste?”
― Marguerite Duras, The Sea Wall

“quelques fois, quand je le regarde c'est comme si je regardais ma vie et c'est pas beau à voir”
― Marguerite Duras, The Sea Wall

“They left off talking. They ceased to mention heaven. They were just cups of acceptance.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April

“True she was old, true she was unbeautiful, true she therefore had no reason to smile, but kind ladies smiled, reason or no. They smiled not because they were happy but because they wished to make happy.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April

“Fortunately, though she was hungry, she didn't mind missing a meal. Life was full of meals. They took up an enormous proportion of one's time.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April

“if one were efficient one wouldn’t be depressed, and that if one does one’s job well one becomes automatically bright and brisk.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April

“A heart is only important to those who want to leave the place that tethers their souls and gives them form.”
― Ellen Oh, A Thousand Beginnings and Endings

“Now are the woods all black,
But still the sky is blue.”
― Marcel Proust , Swann’s Way

“The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way