“Close your eyes, cover your ears with your hands and open your soul.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“This was it; the Mystery of The Unseen, the Gate of Sorrow, that leads to the Grace of the Redeemer. I pressed my lips together, and my hands gripped the windowsill. I saw the hand of Fatima, and all the visible world sank away from me.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“Maybe that is the one real division between men: wood men and desert men.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“من يفكر في الغد لا يمكن أن يكون شجاعا”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“وحدها الصحراء لا تطرح أسئلة ولا تقدم شيئا ولا تعد بشيء”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“Men should be told that there is no Black and no White, for Black is White and White is Black. So my advice is this: let us not do anything that might hurt anybody anywhere in the world, for we are part of each soul, and each soul is part of us.” We sat silent, nonplussed. So this was the heresy of Bab. Suddenly I heard loud sobbing, turned round and saw Asadulla, his face bathed in tears, and distorted with grief.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“لقد فهمت أنهم شديدو الاهتمام بمدارسنا ولغتنا والمستشفيات والحرية. ولكن ما نفع المدارس إذا كان ما يُدرس فيها مجرد هراء؟ ما نفع المستشفيات إذا كانت لا تعالج إلا الجسد بينما تنسى أمر الروح؟ إن أرواحنا تهفو للذهاب إلى الله، لكن كل قومية تعتقد أنها تملك رباً لها وحدها، وأنه الرب الحق والرب والوحيد.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“ثم لزم والدى الصمت وقد بدت عيناه منعزلتين. كان يعرف ما هو أبعد من هذا العالم الواقعى، كما كان... واعياً لعالم آخر يستطيع الانعزال فيه حيث لا يمكن الوصول إليه فيه. لم يكن لدى سوى شعور مبهم عن مملكة هذا العالم الآخر المسالم، الذى يجعل المرء قادراً على دفن الأصدقاء ويمكنه مع ذلك التحدث مع النوتى عن معجزات جزر تشاردشوى. طرقت باب هذا العالم ولكن لم يُسمح لى بالدخول، فقد كنتُ شديد الانهماك فى واقعنا المؤلم.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“Armenians have more imagination than Mohammedans.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“Before you trust your camel to Allah's protection, tie it fast on to your fence.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“Mag sein, daß die Leute sagen werden, ich bleibe daheim, um mich nicht von den dunklen Augen Ninos trennen zu müssen. Mag sein. Vielleicht haben diese Menschen auch recht. Denn diese dunklen Augen sind für mich wie die heimatliche Erde, wie der Ruf der Heimat nach ihrem Sohn, den ein Fremder auf fremde Wege verleiten will. Ich bleibe, um die dunklen Augen der Heimat vor dem Unsichtbaren zu schützen.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“He rose, took a slender silver water can with a long slim neck and staggered out. After a while he came back and put the can on the floor. We all rose to congratulate him, for his body had cleared itself of superfluous matter.”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“Every man who invents something to kill other people easily, quickly and in as great numbers as possible is highly praised, he makes much money and a decoration is bestowed on him. That is good and right. War must be. But on the other hand the Europeans build many hospitals, and a man who during a war cures and feeds enemy soldiers is also praised and decorated”
― Kurban Said, quote from Ali and Nino: A Love Story
“We adapted to being at war, just as we had adapted to the chaos and upheaval of revolution. How amazing and yet tragic it is, I thought, the human instinct for”
― Shirin Ebadi, quote from Iran Awakening
“An estimated two thirds of the women who got criminal abortions were married. This means that up to two thirds of the botched abortions were done on married women; up to two thirds of the dead were married women; perhaps two thirds of the survivors are married women. This means that most of the women who risked death or maiming so as not to bear a child were married—perhaps one million married women each year. They were not shameless sluts, unless all women by definition are. They were not immoral in traditional terms—though, even then, they were thought of as promiscuous and single. Nevertheless, they were not women from the streets, but women from homes; they were not daughters in the homes of fathers, but wives in the homes of husbands. They were, quite simply, the good and respectable women of Amerika. The absolute equation of abortion with sexual promiscuity is a bizarre distortion of the real history of women and abortion—too distorted to be acceptable even in the United States, where historical memory reaches back one decade. Abortion has been legalized just under one decade. The facts should not be obliterated yet. Millions of respectable, God-fearing, married women have had illegal abortions. They thank their God that they survived; and they keep quiet.”
― Andrea Dworkin, quote from Right Wing Women
“She lied, sir. She has always lied. I don't think she ever spoke a word of truth. But when she spoke, I believed her.”
― Prosper Mérimée, quote from Carmen
“My mother says that falling in love and getting dumped is good for you because it prepares you for the real thing, like it gets you ready for true love and all, but I'm thinking it's more like climbing up he St. Louis Arch and falling off twice. Does he first fall really get you ready for the second?”
― Dandi Daley Mackall, quote from My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley
“The myth that we must have “time”—more time—in order to create is a myth that keeps us from using the time we do have.”
― Julia Cameron, quote from The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation Into the Writing Life
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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