Quotes from Brick Lane

Monica Ali ·  432 pages

Rating: (24.5K votes)


“The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Everyday of my life I have prepared for success, worked for it, waited for it, and you don't notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime is finished. Then it hits you--the thing you have been waiting for has already gone by. And it was going in the other direction. It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full." p. 265”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“Apa yang tidak kuketahui-saat masih muda dulu-ada dua jenis cinta. Jenis yang bermula begitu dahsyatnya dan pelan-pelan menghilang, yang terasa seperti tak akan pernah habis lalu suatu hari tahu-tahu ludes. Lalu ada jenis yang tadinya tidak disadari, tetapi terus tumbuh sedikit demi sedikit setiap harinya, seperti kerang yang menghasilkan mutiara, bulir demi bulir, sebuah permata dari pasir.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“She touched his hand for the last time. "Oh, Karim, that we have already done. But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn't me, and you weren't you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn't see things. What we did--we made each other up." p. 382”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“If you think you are powerless, then you are”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane



“It's a success story," said Chanu, exercising his shoulders. "But behind every story of immigration success there lies a deeper tragedy."
Kindly explain this tragedy."
I'm talking about the clash between Western values and our own. I'm talking about the struggle to assimilate and the need to preserve one's identity and heritage. I'm talking about children who don't know what their identity is. I'm talking about the feelings of alienation engendered by a society where racism is prevalent. I'm talking about the terrific struggle to preserve one's own sanity while striving to achieve the best for one's family. I'm talking--" p. 88”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth between your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved (page 87).”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“And so they entwined their lives to drink from the pools of each other’s sadness. From these special watering holes, each man drew strength.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane



“what I did not know - I was a young man - is that there are two kinds of love. The kind that starts off big and slowly wears away, that seems you can never use it up and then one day is finished. And the kind that you don't notice at first, but which adds a little bit to itself every day, like an oyster makes a pearl, grain by grain, a jewel from the sand.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“The boys wore jeans, or tracksuits with big ticks on them as if their clothing had been marked by a teacher who valued, above all else, conformity.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“She had another English word. She carried it all the way down the corridor.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“I can’t stay,” said Chanu, and they clung to each other inside a sadness that went beyond words and tears, beyond that place, those causes and consequences, and became a part of their breath, their marrow, to travel with them from now to wherever they went.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“Life made its pattern around and beneath and through her.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane



“If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men (page 80).”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“He would not come again. This was good. No. This was bad. At least it was an end.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“In the only way that pain can be truly remembered, through a new pain.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“Kadang keadaan ternyata tidak seburuk yang disangka. Kadang-kadang hal buruk yang disangka akan datang malah tidak datang sama sekali. Kalian hanya harus menunggu dan melihat keadaan.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“In the rainy season, back home, when the land had given way to water and the buffaloes grew webbed feet, when the hens took to the roofs, when marooned goats teetered on minuscule islands, when the women splashed across on the raised walkway to the cooking hut and found they could no longer kindle a dung-and-husk fire and looked to their reserves, when the rain rang louder than cow bells, rice was the means, the giver of life.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane



“All the while, when Nazneen turned to her prayers and tried to empty her mind and accept each new thing with grace or indifference, Chanu worked his own method. He was looking for the same essential thing. But he thought he could grab it from the outside and hold it against his chest like a shield...
Where Nazneen turned in, he turned out; where she strove to accept, he was determined to struggle; where she attempted to dull her mind and numb her thoughts, he argued loud; while she wanted to look neither to the past nor to the future, he lived exclusively in both. They took different paths but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“An hour and forty-five minutes before Nazneen's life began-began as it would proceed for quite some time, that is to say uncertainly-her mother, Rupban, felt an iron fist squeeze her belly.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“Spreading rumours is our national past time”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“while she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“A pair of schoolchildren,pale as rice and loud as peacocks,cut over the road and hurtled down a side street,galloping with joy or else with terror (p. 55).”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane



“Sinking, sinking, drinking water. When everyone in the village was fasting a long month,when not a grain, not a drop of water passed between the parched lips of any able-bodied man, woman or child over the age of ten, when the sun was hotter than the cooking pot and dusk was just a febrile wish, the hypocrite went down to the pond to duck his head, to dive and sink, to drink and sink a little lower. p. 105”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“And the city itself was just a glow on the dark earth...”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“The air was hot and wet, as if it had absorbed the sweat of countless bodies. It dripped also with scandal.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“A man cannot live without water. He cannot live without it, but he can bear the thought of no water. A man can live without sex. He can live without it, but he cannot bear the thought of no sex.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane


“Suddenly, she was gripped by the idea that if she changed her clothes her entire life would change as well.”
― Monica Ali, quote from Brick Lane



About the author

Monica Ali
Born place: in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Born date October 20, 1967
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