Alaa Barrawi

“I don’t particularly want to think of your funeral because I’d much prefer to die before you do. But I mean, if I were going to your funeral, at any rate it would be an orgy of grief. I should take a lot of handkerchiefs.”
― Agatha Christie, By the Pricking of My Thumbs

“All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“الأكثر خطورة هي التبريرات الدينية والفتاوى المغرضة التي سهلت عملية "لاس فيجاسية" مكة، فقد أفتى البعض بجواز اعتبار صلاتك وحدك في غرفتك المطلة على الحرم كصلاة جماعة، وبالتالي لا تضطر للنزول إلى ساحة المسجد الحرام وتكبد مشقة الاحتكاك مع جموع المسلمين. بينما الواقع أن فلسفة الحج هي تحقيق هذا البعد الجماعي والتواصل بين أبناء الأمة الإسلامية في نطاق جغرافي مقدس واحد. وعندما نكتفي بتأمل الكعبة من أعلى فتظهر لك كياناً ضعيفاً فلا يمكن أن يحمل أو يرسل أية دلالات روحانية أو إيمانية. بل وصلت الأزمة الأخلاقية لتنمية عمران المسجد الحرام إلى أقصاها بالدعوة من عدة فنادق محيطة بالحرم لحديثي الزواج بقضاء ليالي شهر العسل اللذيذة الممتعة في جناحك المشرف على المنظر الجميل لبيت الله الحرام؛ كعبة المسلمين..”
― علي عبد الرءوف, من مكة إلى لاس فيجاس: أطروحات نقدية في العمارة والقداسة

“We're growing up," Betsy said aloud. She wasn't even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it was irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except to try and see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be.

"I'd like to be a fine one," Betsy thought quickly and urgently.”
― maud hart lovelace, Betsy Was a Junior / Betsy and Joe