Muna > Muna's Quotes

“You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“Later, when you're grown up, you realize you never really get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only eighteen years to spend with them full time, and that's it.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it’s so wonderfully fair.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“At the end of the rainbow waited the pot of gold. But rainbows were made of faint and fragile gossamer-and gold weighed a ton-and since the world began, gold was the reason to do most anything.”
― V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic

“One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Allah tests our patience and our fortitude. He tests out strength of faith. be patient and there will endless rewards for you, insha'Allah" - Utaz Badr”
― Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley

“The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, When Allah loves a people, He tries them.”
― Leila Aboulela , Lyrics Alley

“I have had to learn the hard way that the people who you think love you unconditionally, actually only love the idea of you and when you fall from grace, they no longer want you.”
― Ameera Al Hakawati, Desperate in Dubai, #1

“Education must be a lifelong pursuit. The person who doesn't read is not better off than the person who can't.”
― Sean Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

“We become what we repeatedly do.”
― Sean Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

“The primary purpose of going to college isn't to get a great job. The primary purpose of college is to build a strong mind, which leads to greater self-awareness, capability, fulfillment, and service opportunities, which, incidentally, should lead to a better job.”
― Sean Covey, The 6 Most Important Decisions You'll Ever Make: A Guide for Teens

“Now think deeply.
What have you done with your life over the past year?
How do you feel inside?”
― Sean Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile. MOTHER TERESA”
― Sean Covey, The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“See what you're doing wrong, laugh at it, change and do better.”
― Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?

“Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.”
― Saddam Hussein, The Revolution and Woman in Iraq

“Life isn’t like the movies. People don’t change overnight. people don’t go from arrogant and self-righteous to ashamed and remorseful. They don’t suddenly give in when they’ve spent years taking out. No doesn’t magically become a Yes.”
― Randa Abdel-Fattah, Does My Head Look Big In This?

“What’s the good of being true to your religion on the outside, if you don’t change what’s on the inside,were it really counts ?”
― Randa Abdel-Fattah, Does My Head Look Big In This?

“I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.”
― Sarah Addison Allen

“When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“Any goal in life is attainable as long as one follows it consistently.”
― Ndiritu Wahome, The Sad Artist and Other Fairytales

“It does not matter where one comes from, one can achieve even the greatest of things in life.”
― Ndiritu Wahome, The Sad Artist and Other Fairytales

“We have the power to shape our lives, by the way we think. Only that to have a progressive life, we must train ourselves into thinking in a certain way.”
― Ndiritu Wahome

“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.”
― Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday

“I’m only marginally qualified to be giving advice at all. My body mass index is certainly not ideal, I frequently use my debit card to buy things that cost less than three dollars because I never have cash on me, and my bedroom is so untidy it looks like vandals ransacked the Anthropologie Sale section. I’m kind of a mess.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“This is an important lesson to remember when you're having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won't feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can't feel real joy unless you've felt heartache. You can't have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can't know what it's like to feel holy until you know what it's like to feel really fucking evil. And you can't be birthed again until you've died.”
― Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You

“I've been in love before, it's like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things.You think about the person you love for two minutes then forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love."- By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept”
― Paulo Coelho

“There were people who went to sleep last night,
poor and rich and white and black,
but they will never wake again.

And those dead folks would give anything at all
for just five minutes of this weather
or ten minutes of plowing.

So you watch yourself about complaining.

What you're supposed to do
when you don't like a thing is change it.
If you can't change it,
change the way you think about it.”
― Maya Angelou

“If I should have a daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands so that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.”

She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.

And “Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.”

But I know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it.

I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a human mind. Because that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.

You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.

And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.

“Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.”

Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.

Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.”
― Sarah Kay