Susan Abulhawa

“Thank you,’ I answered, unsure of the proper American response to her gracious enthusiasm. In the Arab world, gratitude is a language unto itself. “May Allah bless the hands that give me this gift”; “Beauty is in the eyes that find me pretty”; “May Allah never deny your prayer”; and so on, an infinite string of prayerful appreciation. Coming from such a culture, I have always found a mere “thank you” an insufficient expression that makes my voice sound miserly and ungrateful.” (169).”

“Always" is a good word to believe in.”

“Amal,I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow, parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell.”

“She loved beyond measure, When I was young I thought her cold. But in time I came to understand that she was too tender for the world she’d been born into,” I said. Sorrow gave Dalia an iron gift. Behind that hard shelter, sheloved boundlessly in the distance and privacy of her solitude, safe fromthe tragic rains of her fate.”

“We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart.”

“How fate is stubborn and holds to habit.”

“I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.”

“I loved her in spite of myself. I loved her immeasurably.Infinitely. And I feared that love as much as I feared my own fury at theworld.”

“You and I are the remains of an unfulfilled legacy, heirs to a kingdom of stolen identities and ragged confusion.”

“Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.”

“I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power.”

“the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.”