"The gasoline flowing through the pump made a high-pitched sound, as if the screaming of my family was still dissolved in it. The nozzle of the gasoline hose went right inside the fuel tank of Sarah’s car, so that the transfer of the fluid was hidden."

"I’ve spent two years denying what happened on that beach. Ignoring it, letting it fester. That’s what Andrew did too, and it killed him in the end. I’m not going to let it kill me and Charlie"

"(Chapter Six)"

"I think [Andrew] truly started to believe that Britain was sinking in to the sea. […] Now that Charlie was almost two I suppose I was looking into the future my child would have to inhabit, and realizing that bitching about it might possibly not be the most constructive strategy."

"(Chapter Five)"

"Then I listened to my sister’s bones being broken one by one. That is how my sister died. […] When the men and the dogs were finished with my sister, the only parts of her that they threw into the sea were the parts that could not be eaten."

"“I just think this is not our affair and so…”"

"So, I realized—life had finally broken through. How silly it looked now, my careful set of defenses against nature: my brazen magazine, my handsome husband, my Maginot line of motherhood and affairs. The world, the real world, had found a way through. It had sat down on my sofa and it would not be denied any longer."

"(Chapter Four)"

"How calm my eyes were, since that day on the beach in Africa. When there has been a loss so fundamental I suppose that to lose just one more thing—a finger, perhaps, or a husband—is of absolutely no consequence at all."

"(Chapter Three)"

"Yu nivver notice dey interview rooms didn’t have no windows? Me swear to yu, dat man’s ooman mus kept her legs cross for da last ten years, de way he took me up on me offer. An it wasn’t jus on de one day, mind. It took de man four interviews fore he was certain me papers was in order.”"

"They told us we must be disciplined to overcome our fears. This is the discipline I learned: whenever I go into a new place, I work out how I would kill myself there. In case the men come suddenly, I make sure I am ready."

"(Chapter Three )"

"I stowed away in a great steel boat, but the horror stowed away inside me. When I left my homeland I thought I had escaped—but out on the open sea, I started to have nightmares. I was naïve to suppose I had left my country with nothing."

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

"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?""

"A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil”"

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

"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”"

"Some see Akhenaten a betrayer of the people’s trust, an Oedipal adulterer, and his wife Nefertiti conniving, unloving, and disloyal"

"Sindbad then gave him a hundred sequins, and henceforward counted him among his friends; also he caused him to give up his profession as a porter, and to eat daily at his table that he might all his life remember Sindbad the Sailor.""

"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?'""

"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?"

"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.""

"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.""

"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.""

"place is so noisy I wonder how locals sleep. The bars, filled mainly with very young kids, are pumping out the latest hits at an ear-splitting level. Some are dancing on the terraces, their movements very suggestive of making love."

"I miss Douala! I feel as if I’ve left the country!"

"Since we left Douala, you’ve seen with your own eyes how beautiful the country is, how rich … but even so, people prefer to go, even if they have to die on the way."

"On either side of the asphalt road, the savannah stretches as far as the eye can see. In the distance, we glimpse a herd of thin cows with long horns."

"If someone had told me that that could happen in Cameroon, I’d never have believed it: perhaps because until then, my Cameroon had been limited to Douala."

"Pa had brought out our entire stock of beer. Simon, Roger and I had the job of serving. We ran to and fro between the kitchen, the living room and the porch. Our h-fi pumped out old Makossa hits: our parents’ favorites. A few women neighbors of their generation, also wearing kaba ngondos, had begun shimmying in the empty space at the center of the room. They looked like they were showing off: you can’t dance the Makossa without showing off."

"Most of all I want to say to him: "You know, my very own Roger Milla, I love you so-so much." Exactly that, spoken like that, calmy, clearly, in such a way that he won't doubt my sincerity. But I say nothing. It's not done, that kind of declaration between brothers. At least not like that."

"Just before she dies, Bint Allah always asks her murderers polemical questions: ‘What crime can be the crime of a virgin never touched by the hand of a man?’"

"A strange face, neither human nor animal; a face that belonged not to a man, or to a father, or to an Imam’"

"My mother died a virgin and so will I’, to which they reply, ‘You are the child of sin and your mother was stoned to death’"

"Only Tolba believes it possible and suggests that the motive is a hidden love of Zohra"

"His body was foiund on the road to the Palma.'"

"A few days had brought us nearer to one another. The sense of companionship had gotten the better of the old political differences as well as the deeply rooted aversion of two opposed temperaments, though occasionally the buried differences would drift up to the surface, reawakening an ugly antagonism""

"‘It was he that took me away from my misery. I saw him seated on his throne and fell in love with him immediately’"

"Miramar - Summary & Analysis"

"I often think of how much love is lost as gay kids grow up. We are robbed of the chance to experience the innocence of early teenage love. Because you spend all that time filled with fear, mastering your own pretense."

"It’s one thing to love a child, but it’s an entirely different thing for the same child to feel loved. A home is the last place a child should feel conditionally loved."

"First we root our sensibility in the camp, and with each seed sown a bit of that fear is stripped off."