Quotes from Desert Flower

Waris Dirie ·  240 pages

Rating: (14K votes)


“I feel that God made my body perfect the way I was born. Then man robbed me, took away my power, and left me a cripple. My womanhood was stolen. If God had wanted those body parts missing, why did he create them?
I just pray that one day no woman will have to experience this pain. It will become a thing of the past. People will say "Did you hear, female genital mutilation has been outlawed in Somalia?" Then the next country, and the next, and so on, until the world is safe for all women. What a happy day that will be, and that's what I'm working toward. In'shallah, if God is willing, it will happen. ”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower


“My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive.”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower


“Women’s loyalty has to be earned with trust and affection, rather than barbaric rituals. The time has come to leave the old ways of suffering behind”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower


“Many friends have expressed concern that a religious fanatic will try to kill me when I go to Africa. After all, I’ll be speaking out against a crime many fundamentalists consider a holy practice. I’m sure my work will be dangerous, and I admit to being scared…. But my faith tells me to be strong, that God led me down this path for a reason. He has work for me to do. This is my mission. And I believe that long before the day I was born, God chose the day I will die, so I can’t change that. In the meantime, I might as well take a chance, because that’s what I’ve done all my life.”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower


“The people celebrate with our traditional dancing: the women clapping their hands and chanting, their low sweet voices humming across the desert night, and the men leaping high into the air. Everyone contributes food, and we eat”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower



“When the shows begin in Milan for the season, every woman and girl in modeling heads there, along with every woman and girl who’s ever dreamed of becoming a model. Suddenly the city is mobbed by extremely tall mutant women, running everywhere like ants.”
― Waris Dirie, quote from Desert Flower


About the author

Waris Dirie
Born place: Galkacyo, Somalia
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“silence. Finally, he said, “So you and”
― Leila Meacham, quote from Roses


“No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves.”
― Marcel Proust, quote from In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower


“The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from I Shall Wear Midnight


“So I simply don't buy the concept of "Generation X" as the "lost generation." I see too many good kids out there, kids who are ready and willing to do the right thing, just as Jack was. Their distractions are greater, though. There's no more simple life with simple choices for the young.”
― Johnny Cash, quote from Cash


“You have to be like a turtle, she thought; you have to figure out how to bring your home along with you.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood


Interesting books

The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm
(3.9K)
The Shattering: Prel...
by Christie Golden
Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain
(6.2K)
Descartes' Error: Em...
by António R. Damásio
Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300
(263)
Sabrina Fair
(125)
Sabrina Fair
by Samuel Taylor
The Shockwave Rider
(3.2K)
The Shockwave Rider
by John Brunner
The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World
(1.2K)
The Biggest Secret:...
by David Icke

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.