Alia Makki

“How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time, until your loved ones give you poison and sell you to anatomy, and even then you will die with a hole inside you, and you will wail and curse at a life ill-lived.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“أصل كل معصية وغفلة وشهوة الرضا عن النفس، وأصل كل طاعة ويقظة وعفة عدم الرضا عنها، لأن تصحب جاهلا لا يرضى عن نفسه خير لك من أن تصحب عالما يرضى عن نفسه
فأى علم لعالم يرضى عن نفسه؟ وأى جهل لجاهل لا يرضى عن نفسه "؟”
― محمد الغزالي, الجانب العاطفي من الإسلام

“We have lost the art of public tenderness, these small gestures of wiping and washing; we have forgotten how abjectly the body welcomes a formal touch.”
― Anne Enright, The Gathering

“But he asked himself now if he would not be disobeying God. And does not God permit love, since He surrounds it with such visible splendor?”
― Guy de Maupassant, The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, Part One