Iman Hashim

“أحبك حتى يؤمن الأصوليون
ويدرك العلمانيون
أن الحب فرض عَيْن”
― أحمد بخيت, صمت الكليم

“You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
What's it like in hell?"
Same like in heaven," he said.
He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."
He said. "To up, to down -- all same, at end."
I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below.
I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"
Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.
Same-same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy in journey."
I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is.. "
Love, too," he said.
Ketut laughed again, "Always so difficult for young people to understand this!”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“...Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.”
― David Nicholls, One Day