Mila

“Your father—my God, you were his pride and joy. He came home from work to feed you every lunchtime, even if it meant he barely got a chance to eat his own meal. He rocked you to sleep at night. He clipped your tiny nails so carefully that you laughed when he did it. I could not believe he ever thought he would be a bad parent.

You were my world. But to your father, Salahudin? You were the solar system. Bigger. The universe itself. “He will be a neurosurgeon,” your father said. “He will be a writer. He will be an architect.”
― Sabaa Tahir, All My Rage

“I’ll survive this. I’ll live. But there’s a hole in me, never to be filled. Maybe that’s why people die of old age. Maybe we could live forever if we didn’t love so completely. But we do. And by the time old age comes, we’re filled with holes, so many that it’s too hard to breathe. So many that our insides aren’t even ours anymore. We’re just one big empty space, waiting to be filled by the darkness. Waiting to be free.”
― Sabaa Tahir, All My Rage

“…I’m Salhudin. Sal.”
“’Sal’? No way … You make people call you by your name. If they can say Santiago, Alexander, Demetrius, and Ecclesiastes, they can say Salahudin.”
― Sabaa Tahir, All My Rage

“There cannot be light without darkness, nor darkness without light. You must have the contrast for both to exist.”
― Rick Riordan, The Sun and the Star