"This woman knew exactly what she was doing. The intoxication of lust turned her away from the path of the Lord. Today, the Lord turns His back on her. She has no right to His mercy, no right to the pity of the faithful. She has lived in dishonor; so shall she die."

"And the women, despite wearing long veils and peering through netting, pirouetted in their perfumes like gusts of warm air."

"The boy would perhaps become an accountant, certainly something one rung above his father, because each generation must better itself, as they had done by emigrating."

"What a session! I don't know... After two hours ofthat... feel like I'm caught in a roll of sticky tape... unreal...'"

"I reply that I don’t write children’s stories; and he writes back that at a recent congress/book fair/seminar a certain novelist said every writer ought to write at least one story for children. I think of sending a postcard saying I don’t accept that I ‘ought’ to write anything."

"As long as the cornerstones of the ideology remain intact—Group Areas, including the splintering of the country into a chequered map of ‘homelands’ and a staggering program of resettlement; separate education systems; the ‘Immorality’ Act; an entire economy based on exploitation —apartheid will persist. What we have seen in recent years has been a modernizing, a sophistication of the system; by no means a development towards its radical destruction"

"this is the reason why the wearing of the burqa has become a necessity, more to preserve women from malicious eyes than to spare men the temptations of infinite allurements. . . . How far off those days seem."

"He wasn't sure what was real and what was a dream."

"The lines between good and evil were blurred, and it was hard to know who was the enemy."

"The world was a strange place now, a place of shadows and ghosts."

"The past was always with them, a shadow that followed them wherever they went."

"He was going mad. He knew it. He could feel it happening."

"They were all broken men, but they were trying to put themselves back together, piece by piece."

"They were all walking corpses, their bodies alive but their souls already dead." ** This quote conveys the devastating effects of war on the soldiers' psyches, suggesting that they are emotionally numb and detached."

"The widow of a chief can be freed only by the taking of a head."

"The world had gone mad, but they were the only ones who knew it."

"They were fighting for a cause that they didn't understand, for a war that they didn't believe in."

"The noise was a physical thing, a pressure that pressed down on you, making it hard to breathe."

"The mess has scuffed no-colour lino — the colour of misery, if misery has a colour....""

"They were killing each other for no reason, for a piece of land that didn't matter."

"After marriage complete fidelity was required and one expression of this was that one must never utter the name of an ex-lover."

"That's it on the maps; nature doesn't acknowledge frontiers. Neither can ecology... Where to begin to understand what we've only got a computerspeak label for, ecosystem? Where to decide it begins."

"We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think - at least beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job."

"Ghosts everywhere. Even the living were only ghosts in the making. You learned to ration your commitment to them. This moment in this tent already had the quality of remembered experience."

"Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be."

"So I conjure thee, by the honor of thine ancestors, make haste to kill me and do her justice upon me, as there is no living for me after her!""

"Rich and happy as I was after my third voyage, I could not make up my mind to stay at home altogether. My love of trading, and the pleasure I took in anything that was new and strange, made me set my affairs in order, and begin my journey through some of the Persian provinces.""

"Murder is only killing in the wrong place."

"The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison."

"Never bite the hand that feeds you.""

"Scheherazade possessed courage, wit, and penetration. She had read much, and had so admirable a memory, that she never forgot any thing she had read. She had successfully applied herself to philosophy, medicine, history, and the liberal arts; and her poetry excelled the compositions of the best writers of her time. Besides this, she was a perfect beauty, and all her accomplishments were crowned by solid virtue.""

"Aladdin had won the hearts of the people by his gentle bearing. He was made captain of the Sultan's armies, and won several battles for him, but remained as courteous as before, and lived thus in peace and content for several years.""

"It is true, Prince Ahmed, the princess my niece is obliged to your artificial apple for her cure, but let me ask you, whether you could have been so serviceable to her if you had not known by Prince Ali's tube the danger she was in, and if Prince Houssain's carpet had not brought you to her so soon?"

"Since I must die,' he said, 'before I choose the manner of my death, I conjure you on your honour to tell me if you really were in that vase?'""

"He told his son the secret of the cave, which his son handed down in his turn, so the children and grandchildren of Ali Baba were rich to the end of their lives.""

"Spare me and Allah will spare thee; slay me not or Allah shall slay thee.”"

"Even the living were only ghosts in the making. You learned to ration your commitment to them."

"for Nefertiti, “beauty and brilliance combined,” who believes in his cause and does everything she can to stand by her husband"

"One can believe that Akhenaten was indeed a “mouse that fancied himself a lion”"

"“Life is a sky laden with clouds of contradictions”"

"Those who followed Akhenaten to the end seemed to believe in conscience, they believed in God before and despite of His weak messenger"

"I want to cry now, not later! I want to be the first because if I cry after the others how will we know that I cried too?"

"I said no more, but the flames of rage continued to burn inside me.....Why should we protect those who contributed to our own destruction?""