Basma Saad

“What we so admire and call "single minded dedication" was really "obsessive self-involvement". What in that exactly is admirable?”
― Harlan Coben, Live Wire

“يجب أن تنظر، وهذه قاعدة أخرى من قواعدنا. اغماض العينين لن بغير شيء. لا شيء سيختفي لمجرد أنك لا تريد أن تراه. بل، ستجد أن الامر ازداد سوءاً في المرة التالية التي تنظر فيها. هذا هو العالم الذي نحيا فيه. أبق عينيك مفتوحتين على وسعهما. الجبان فقط هو من يغمض عينيه. اغماض عينيك وسد أذنيك لن يوقف الزمن." (on page 194 of 621)”
― هاروكي موراكامي - كافكا على الشاطيء

“Bucket had started his criminal career in Braas, not far from when Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There he had gotten together with some like-minded peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newsstand was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who has chosen the name- The Violence, in English, not swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English.

The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar academic success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake.
So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braas from the people in charge of the concert hall in Vaxjo. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music, they might like to put in am appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra, Musica Viate.

Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newsstand, and instead went into Vaxjo to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible lesson in respect. It all went well, except that Bucket’s leather glove happened to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the personal item in question.

Losing the glove was not good. Bucket had traveled to Vaxjo by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braas that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and adress inside the glove, in case he lost it."
For more quotes from the novel visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com”
― Jonas Jonasson, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

“She fell silent, remembering the jolt of envy and longing she’d felt when she’d framed the Browns in her viewfinder. Now, weeks and miles later, it was another jolt for Bryan to realize she hadn’t brushed off the peculiar feeling. She has managed to put it aside, somewhere to the back of her mind, but it popped out again now as she thought of the couple in the bleachers of a small-town park.

Family, cohesion. Bonding. Did some people just keep promises better than others? she wondered. Or where some people simply unable to blend their lives with someone’s else, make those adjustments, the compromises?

When she looked back, she believed both she and Rob had tried, but in their own ways. There’d been no meeting of the minds, but two separate thought patterns making decisions that never melded with each other. Did that mean that a successful marriage depended on the mating of two people who thought along the same lines?

With a sigh, she turned onto the highway that would lead them into Tennessee. If it was true, she decided, she was much better off single. Though she’d met a great many people she liked and could have fun with, she’d never met anyone who thought the way she did. Especially the man seated next to her with his nose already buried in the newspaper. There alone they were radically different.”
For more quotes visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com”
― Nora Roberts, Summer Pleasures