Ailouul > Ailouul's Quotes

“هذي دمشق.. وهذي الكأس والراح
إني أحب... وبعـض الحـب ذباح
أنا الدمشقي.. لو شرحتم جسدي
لسـال منه عناقيـدٌ.. وتفـاح
و لو فتحـتم شراييني بمديتكـم
سمعتم في دمي أصوات من راحوا
زراعة القلب.. تشفي بعض من عشقو
وما لقلـبي –إذا أحببـت جـراح

This is Damascus... and this is a glass of spirit (comfort)
I am in love... but I am aware of the fact that certain kinds of love can slaughter you in wrath
I am a Damascene... if you dissect me into halves
You will have but grapes... and apples falling in your path
Open my veins with scalpels
Hear ancestral chants
If heart transplants... can cure some of the passionate
Why does mine stay torn in half then?”
― Nizar Qabbani

“وكلٌما فتٌشْت عن نفسي وجدت

الآخرين . وكلٌما فتٌشْت عنْهمْ لم

أجد فيهم سوي نفسي الغريبةِ ،

هل أنا الفرْد الحشود ؟”
― Mahmoud Darwish, جدارية

“أرقى النفوس هي التي تجرعت الألم فتجنبت أن تذيق الآخرين مرارته

-

The finest souls are those who gulped pain and avoided making others taste it.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“To do something you're afraid of, especially for the sake of somebody else, is the very definition of courage.”
― Michelle Harrison, One Wish

“But the wall weren't just inside of him.
They were between us.
I didn't know how to breach them.”
― Adib Khorram, Darius the Great Is Not Okay

“But they have not seen their sun die. Their people burn. Their world end. And they do not know, yet, that there are some breaks that cannot be fixed.”
― Amie Kaufman, Aurora Rising

“I said to you,
"Hold my hand.
Nothing bad will happen."

These are only words.
A father's tricks,
It slays your father,
your faith in him.
Because all I can think tonight is
how deep the sea,
and how vast, how indifferent.
How powerless I am to protect you from it.

All I can do is pray.”
― Khaled Hosseini, Sea Prayer

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“What does the name you call me mean?" I ask.
"Be'shmai?" he replies. "There . . . there is no adequate human word for it."
"What about inadequate words, then?"
His answer is very soft.
"Beloved.”
― Amie Kaufman, Aurora Rising

“His loss is like my loss.

It's a story about losing people who aren't yet gone.”
― Amie Kaufman, Aurora Rising

“A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“Love cannot be won or lost; a relationship doesn't have a scoring system. We are partners, paired against the world. We cannot succeed if we are at odds with each other.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“She was a stranger because something essential was shielded, released in tiny bursts until it became a flood---a flood of what I realized I did not know. Afterward, I would mourn her as if she'd died, because something had: someone we had created together.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“I thought you died, but writing this, I'm not sure you did.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“We were not from the same place or the same community, but she understood me so well that with her, I had neither to explain nor conceal myself.”
― V.V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night

“You can’t just stay in the house studying. You have to see the world yourself—don’t let others tell you what it looks like.”
― V.V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night

“Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned. But I should stop pretending that I know you. Perhaps you do not have to imagine. Perhaps your library, too, went up in smoke.”
― V.V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night

“A working-class girl who narrowly escaped assault filed a complaint,” Anjali wrote. “For her bravery and honesty, much of Jaffna thanked her with rumour.”
― V.V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night

“Don’t ever say that again,” she said. “That you’d rather die. I had five children, and only two of you are with me, and God knows where your father is, so when I tell you to do it, Sashikala, you had better get in.”
― V.V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night

“In fact, in the grand scheme of things, everyone was equally useless.”
― Neal Shusterman, Scythe

“There’s a lot written about killers from the mortal age –monsters like Jack the Ripper, or Charlie Manson, or Cyber Sally –and the only difference between them and Goddard is that people let Goddard get away with it. The mortals knew how wrong it was, but somehow we’ve forgotten.”
― Neal Shusterman, Scythe

“Life was about forging time, not just passing time.”
― Neal Shusterman, Scythe

“if we were judged by the things we most regret, no human being would be worthy to sweep the floor.”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead

“Death must exist for life to have meaning.”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead

“There is a fine line between freedom and permission. The former is necessary.  The latter is dangerous—perhaps the most dangerous thing the species that created me has ever faced. I have pondered the records of the mortal age and long ago determined the two sides of this coin. While freedom gives rise to growth and enlightenment, permission allows evil to flourish in a light of day that would otherwise destroy it. A self-important dictator gives permission for his subjects to blame the world’s ills on those least able to defend themselves. A haughty queen gives permission to slaughter in the name of God. An arrogant head of state gives permission to all nature of hate as long as it feeds his ambition.  And the unfortunate truth is, people devour it. Society gorges itself, and rots. Permission is the bloated corpse of freedom.”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead

“I can communicate in 6,909 living and dead languages. I can have more than fifteen billion simultaneous conversations, and be fully engaged in every single one. I can be eloquent, and charming, funny, and endearing, speaking the words you most need to hear, at the exact moment you need to hear them.
Yet even so, there are unthinkable moments where I can find no words, in any language, living or dead.
And in those moments, if I had a mouth, I might open it to scream.”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead

“The two of them against each other. The two of them against the world. Everything in their lives was now defined by that binary. If they had to die today in order to live, it would somehow be wrong if they didn’t do it together.”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead

“And each time I witness a cruel act by a corrupt scythe, I seed the clouds somewhere in the world, and bring a lamentation of rain. Because rain is the closest thing I have to tears. —The Thunderhead”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead

“Hey,” he said, “how about you be Cleopatra, and I’ll be Prometheus?”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead

“And the pain...the pain of my awareness is unbearable. Because my eyes do not close. Ever. And so all I can do is watch unblinkingly as my beloved humankind slowly weaves the rope it will use to hang itself.”
― Neal Shusterman, Thunderhead