“All his life he would cherish the memory of an endless caravan of camels alongside the railway line, the laden beasts plodding patiently through the snow, ignoring the twentieth century as it hurtled past them in a clash of iron and a shriek of steam.”
“You are the best book you could ever write phi”
“All life is theatre, he said. We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves....”
“A lifetime had to be crafted, just like anything else, she thought, it had to be moulded and beaten and burnished in order to get the most out of it.”
“These were innocent people, so innocent that they thought poverty a crime that wealth would allow them to forget. --- from the notebooks of Celal Salik”
“And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre.”
“In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals.”
“Time plays no role in the life of one man—the subtle consciousness of it floating past me is more than enough. Years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds—what does it matter? Floating by, it rubs against my skin, face, and hair—wearing me down, yet polishing me all the while. Time is like fine grains of sand in a desert storm. At first, you don’t pay any attention to it, but the more it hits you in the face, the more aware of it you become, the more annoying it gets until, one day, you find yourself suffocating. The weight of it eventually bends your spine, until you are crawling on your hands and knees, unable to stand straight. Then comes the time to crawl back into the womb, crawl inside and wait for rebirth.”
“Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up. Ray Levine was one of those people.”
“It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.”
“Try jogging when following your heart, it s healthier”
“If you can hear the birds singing, you re in the right place”
“Peace becomes a fantasy when egos are promoted and facts distorted.”
“A good lie does not exist.”
“You think that the world we live in is ordinary. We make noise and static to fill the empty spaces where ghosts live. We let other people grow our food, bleach our clothes. We seal ourselves in, clean the dirt from our skins, eat of animals whose blood does not stain our hands. We long ago left the ways of our ancestors, oracles and blood sacrifice, traffic with the spirit world, listening for the voices out of stones and trees. But maybe sometimes you have felt the uncanny, alone at night in a dark wood, or waiting by the edge of the ocean for the tide to come in. We have paved over the ancient world, but that does not mean we have erased it.”
“I am smart because I know I nothing.”
“إن القناع الذى يغلف الإنسان ليس ثيابه وحدها, فجلده ثوب آخر.. ولحمه وعظمه كلها ثياب.. أما هو نفسه, فبعيد.. بعيد.. تحت هذه الأقمشة السميكة من اللحم والدم.”