Asma'a Ghonemy > Asma'a's Quotes

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“إذا أردت أن تصمد للحياة فلا تأخذها على أنها مأساة”
― توفيق الحكيم

“الخيال.. هو ليل الحياة الجميل

هو حصننا وملاذنا من قسوة النهار الطويل

!إن عالم “الواقع” لا يكفى وحده لحياة البشر

إنه أضيق من أن يتسع لحياة إنسانية كاملة”
― توفيق الحكيم, عصفور من الشرق

“روتين

القهوة مع الحليب في الصباح
قبلة الزوجة السريعة
الطريق إلى العمل
الطريق إلى البيت
الطريق إلى السرير
و من ثم..
القهوة مع الحليب في الصباح

إنه حيّ تمامًا
المسه و لا تخفْ
فالموتى لا يخيفون”
― رياض الصالح الحسين, وعل في الغابة

“Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme...they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.”
― Philip Levine

“إن المرء يحتاج لقدر هائل من الجهل حتى يقرب الله، وأعتقد أننى كنت أعرف على الدوام أكثر مما يجب.”
― لورنس داريل, Justine

“And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.”
― Toni Morrison

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“و الأهم هو أن كل الصلوات ستصل الى الله في نهاية الأمر, مهما كانت اللغة أو المذهب”
― سنان أنطون, يا مريم

“I am a tiny seashell
that has secretly drifted ashore
and carries the sound of the ocean
surging through its body.”
― Edward Hirsch

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Your thorns are the best part of you.”
― Marianne Moore

“But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death!”
― Anne Frank

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”
― Charles Bukowski

“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”
― Pablo Neruda

“لدينا مشكلة هي أننا باستمرار خائفون على الإيمان، كأن ما لدينا هو إيمان معلول يحتاج إلى حماية. الإيمان لا يحتاج إلى حماية لأنه الاقتناع”
― نصر حامد أبو زيد

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“إن الله لم يفطر الناس على الصلاة الصوم وتقبيل الصلبان وحجاب المرأة بل فطرهم على حب الحياة الآمنة التي لا تستطيع أن تكون حياة , أو أن تكون آمنة إلّا في مجتمع إنساني قادر على ردع منطق القوة بضمان حقّ الاغلبية في صياغة القوانين . وهي الرسالة التي عمل الأنبياء على تبليغها بالدعوة إلى إقامة العدل . وعمل الفقهاء على تغييبها بالدعوة إلى إقامة الشعائر , في معركة لا مبرر لها سوى حاجة الفقه إلى تطويع الدين في خدمة الاقطاع”
― الصادق النيهوم, إسلام ضد الإسلام

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours”
― Kinky Friedman

“Angels,
we have grown apart.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
― Virginia Woolf