Hanan Alaali > Hanan's Quotes

“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”
― Margaret Atwood

“The human currency of praise is Monopoly money. It feels great for a moment to collect, but when the game is over, it's worthless.”
― Yasmin Mogahed, Reclaim Your Heart: Personal Insights on Breaking Free from Life's Shackles

“Ujunwa thought she might like her, but only the way she liked alcohol—in small amounts.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck

“The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome.”
― Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

“It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“every human heart beat is a universe of possibilities.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“we must find the patience and resignation to endure our challenges as they arise to meet us.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering—no matter what you may think of them and their supposed good fortune.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

“If you stay right where you are, then people will eventually come to you”
― Robert Doisneau

“If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.”
― Robert Doisneau

“The charm of a city, now we come to it, is not unlike the charm of flowers. It partly depends on seeing time creep across it. Charm needs to be fleeting. Nothing could be less palatable than a museum-city propped up by prosthetic devices of concrete.

Paris is not in danger of becoming a museum-city, thanks to the restlessness and greed of promoters. Yet their frenzy to demolish everything is less objectionable than their clumsy determination to raise housing projects that cannot function without the constant presence of an armed police force…

All these banks, all these glass buildings, all these mirrored facades are the mark of a reflected image. You can no longer see what’s happening inside, you become afraid of the shadows. The city becomes abstract, reflecting only itself. People almost seem out of place in this landscape. Before the war, there were nooks and crannies everywhere.

Now people are trying to eliminate shadows, straighten streets. You can’t even put up a shed without the personal authorization of the minister of culture.

When I was growing up, my grandpa built a small house. Next door the youth club had some sheds, down the street the local painter stored his equipment under some stretched-out tarpaulin. Everybody added on. It was telescopic. A game. Life wasn’t so expensive — ordinary people would live and work in Paris. You’d see masons in blue overalls, painters in white ones, carpenters in corduroys. Nowadays, just look at Faubourg Sainte-Antoine — traditional craftsmen are being pushed out by advertising agencies and design galleries. Land is so expensive that only huge companies can build, and they have to build ‘huge’ in order to make it profitable. Cubes, squares, rectangles. Everything straight, everything even. Clutter has been outlawed. But a little disorder is a good thing. That’s where poetry lurks. We never needed promoters to provide us, in their generosity, with ‘leisure spaces.’ We invented our own. Today there’s no question of putting your own space together, the planning commission will shut it down. Spontaneity has been outlawed. People are afraid of life.”
― Robert Doisneau, Paris

“And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Failure doesn’t always mean defeat; it only means that you fell short of accomplishing your objective.”
― Todd Henry, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I feel sorry for beautiful people. Beauty, from the moment you possess it, is already slipping away, ephemeral. That must be difficult.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“No thank you,” I said. “I don’t want to accept a drink from you, because then I would be obliged to purchase one for you in return, and I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in spending two drinks’ worth of time with you.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Your voice changes when you’re smiling, it alters the sound somehow.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“It’s the loneliest people who love books the most.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman is No Man

“Too often being happy means being passive or playing it safe. There's no skill required in happiness, no strength of character, nothing extraordinary. Its discontent that drives creation the most--passion, desire, defiance. Revolutions don't come from a place of happiness. If anything, I think it's sadness, or discontent at least, that's at the root of everything beautiful.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man

“A real choice doesn't have conditions. A real choice is free.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man

“Perhaps that was why she had spent her childhood with a book in front of her face, trying to make sense of her life through stories. Books were her only reliable source of comfort, her only hope.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man

“I was born without a voice, one cold, overcast day in Brooklyn, New York. No one ever spoke of my condition. I did not know I was mute until years later, when I opened my mouth to ask for what I wanted and realized no one could hear me.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man

“But maybe that’s the way of life, Fareeda thought. To understand things only after they had passed, only once it was too late.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man

“It's the loneliest people who love books the most...it was the opposite of loneliness, too, like there were too many people around me, forced connections, that I needed a little isolation to think on my own, to be my own person.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“I wasn't good at pretending, that was the thing. After what had happened in that burning house, given what went on there, I could see no point in being anything other than truthful with the world. I had, literally, nothing left to lose. But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I'd worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don't find very funny, or do things they don't particularly want to, with people whose company they don't particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I'd fly solo. It was safer that way. Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“The moment hung in time like a drop of honey from a spoon, heavy, golden.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to continue to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it might seem, the possibility of change.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“You can't protect other people, however hard you try.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that there’s something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don’t need anyone, you can take care of yourself. That’s the thing: it’s best just to take care of yourself.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine