Shaimaa > Shaimaa's Quotes

“You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If a band stays together twenty years, it’s a miracle. If a comedy duo stays together twenty years, they’re a triumph. Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour? Is the sun a failure because it’s going to end in a billion years? No, it’s the fucking sun. Why does a marriage not count? It isn’t in us, it isn’t in human beings, to be tied to one person forever.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young."
"Yes! It's like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won't ever be back.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“عين امرأة سعيدة، و السعداء لا يرون الحقيقة.”
― نجيب محفوظ عصر الحب

“Some demeaned it as “bumming around at home,” while others glorified it as “work that sustains life,” but none tried to calculate its monetary value. Probably because the moment you put a price on something, someone has to pay.”
― Cho Nam-Joo, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

“لا أعرف كيف لا تتوقف أرجلنا عن المشي حين نفقد شخصًا نحبُّه. ألم نكن نمشي لا على قدمينا بل على قدميه؟ ألم تكن النزهة كلها من أجله؟ ألم يكن هو النزهة؟”
― وديع سعادة, محاولة وصل ضفتين بصوت

“Tired of all who come with words, words but no language
I went to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words.
The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!
I come across the marks of roe-deer's hooves in the snow.
Language, but no words.”
― Tomas Transtromer

“Every beginning, after all, is nothing but a sequel, and the book of events is always open in the middle.”
― Wislawa Szymborska

“Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still”
― Wislawa Szymborska

“If you are looking for me
I am beyond nowhere [ … ]

Beyond nowhere there is a place desire opens
like an umbrella,
breeze like thirst sinks deep into the leaves.

Bells of rain carol fresh watery tunes
about how lonely humans are here
where the shadows of tree trunks stream into
endlessness.

If you are looking for me,
come soft and quietly, lest you crack the glass
heart
that cups my loneliness.”
― Sohrab Sepehri, The Oasis of Now: Selected Poems

“نهلك بما نعشق نحيا بما نخاف”
― ابراهيم الكوني

“حائرٌ بين اثنين؛مؤمنٌ بفكرتي وأرفُضُها، كافرٌ بحدسي وأرغبُهُ”
― سعود السنعوسي, حمام الدار: أحجية ابن أزرق

“Comfort can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor but also a ceiling.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“when they brought us ova-
y'all did
try to tear it way from us.
The truth of our bodies?
The way they moved
Our bodies.
Told us it
was
devilish
Our bodies
told us that it won't
fit
for civ'lized eyes”
― Jeremy O. Harris, Slave Play

“Maybe this is the point of a
pregnancy, of motherhood itself. A child to undo the woman who bears it, to pull
her safely apart.”
― Burnt Sugar By Avni Doshi

“I can’t think
in the face of you telling me who you think I am”
― Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview

“It’s difficult because I’ve already heard so many stories.
It’s hard to find the one I’d wanted to tell”
― Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview