Mayada Srouji > Mayada's Quotes

“The violent subjugation of the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans will only ensure that those who oppose us will increasingly speak to us in the language we speak to them—violence.”
― Chris Hedges

“هناك على الدوام شخصًا ما في العالم ينتظر شخصًا آخر، سواء أكان ذلك في وسط الصحراء أم في أعماق المدن الكبرى.”
― باولو كويلو, The Alchemist

“Everyone believes the world's greatest lie..." says the mysterious old man.
"What is the world's greatest lie?" the little boy asks.
The old man replies, "It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.”
― paulo coelho

“السفينة آمنةٌ على الشاطئ، لكنّها ليست من أجل ذلك صُنِعت.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

“Writing: such has been my crime ever since I was a small child. To this day writing remains my crime. Now, although I am out of prison, I continue to live inside a prison of another sort, one without steel bars. For the technology of oppression and might without justice has become more advanced, and the fetters imposed on mind and body have become invisible. The most dangerous shackles are the invisible ones, because they deceive people into believing they are free. This delusion is the new prison that people inhabit today, north and south, east and west...We inhabit the age of the technology of false consciousness, the technology of hiding truths behind amiable humanistic slogans that may change from one era to another...Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Memoirs from the Women's Prison

“Inciting women to rebel against the divine laws of Islam.’ This became the accusation that was leveled against me whenever I wrote or did anything to defend the rights of women against the injustices widespread in society. It followed me wherever I went, step by step, moved through the corridors of government administrations year after year, irrespective of who came to power, or of the regime that presided over the destinies of our people. It was only years later that I began to realized that the men and women who posed as the defenders of Islamic morality and values were most often the ones who were undermining the real ethics and moral principles of society.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Walking through Fire: The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words

“If a woman had a right to wear a miniskirt, surely I had the right to choose my headscarf. My choice was a sign of independence of mind. Surely, to choose to wear what I wanted was an assertion of my feminism. I was a feminist, wasn't I?

But I was to learn that choosing to wear the hijab is much easier than choosing to take it off. And that lesson was an important reminder of how truly "free" choice is.”
― Mona Eltahawy, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
― Audre Lorde

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
― Rumi

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“And you became like the coffee,
In the deliciousness,
and the bitterness
and the addiction.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“She does not love you.
Your metaphors thrill her
you are her poet.
But that's all there's to it.

from “She Does Not Love You”
― Mahmoud Darwish, A River Dies of Thirst: Journals

“I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a
single word: Home.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

“How could I say to my father that what attracted me to living creatures was the shine in their eyes. Not any shine. The eyes of a wild cat or a tiger were shining. What I was looking for was a special shine that could be found only in the eyes of some human beings. I felt that Dr Rashad’s eyes were full of cruelty, that now and then I could spot a glimmer, but it was always sharp and short and calculating despite the soft, delicate way in which he was saying things to my father.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Walking through Fire: The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words

“Motherhood goes back in history to a time when a father had no way of knowing his children. Fatherhood only became known when class patriarchal society had established itself and imposed monogamous marriage on women. Motherhood is like sun and rain and plants, a quality and product of nature which does not require laws or systems in order to exist.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Walking through Fire: The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words

“Ever since I was a child I used to hear my father say: ‘If the price we pay for freedom is high, we pay a much higher price if we accept to be slaves.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Walking through Fire: The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words

“In our country we use different words [than feminism] which mean the liberation or the emancipation of women. Of course I believe in the emancipation of women. It will change a lot of things in society for the better.
But, you know, the class patriarchal system under which we live oppresses men too and the discrimination from which women suffer is not good for the life of men. Don’t you think so?”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Walking through Fire: The Later Years of Nawal El Saadawi, In Her Own Words

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride