Zeitoun

Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure.

Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light.

Every time a crime was committed by a Muslim, that person's faith was mentioned, regardless of its relevance. When a crime is committed by a Christian, do they mention his religion? ... When a crime is committed by a black man, it's mentioned in the first breath: 'An African American man was arrested today...' But what about German Americans? Anglo Americans? A white man robs a convenience store and do we hear he's of Scottish descent? In no other instance is the ancestry mentioned.

What is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?

If your hand doesn't work for it, your heart doesn't feel sorry for it.

Then he got more books. He saved all the books.

What would happen," Zeitoun asked the captain, "if you and I went below the deck, and just went to our bedrooms and went to sleep?" The captain gave him a quizzical look and answered that the ship would most certainly hit something -- would run aground or into a reef. In any event, disaster. "So without a captain, the ship cannot navigate." "Yes," the captain said, "What's your point?" Zeitoun smiled. "Look above you, at the stars and moon. How do the stars keep their place in the sky, how does the moon rotate around the earth, the earth around the sun? Who's navigating?" The captain smiled at Zeitoun. He'd been led into a trap. "Without someone guiding us," Zeitoun finished, "wouldn't the stars and moon fall to earth, wouldn't the oceans overrun the land? Any vessel, any carrier of humans, needs a captain, yes?" The captain was taken with the beauty of the metaphor, and let his silence imply surrender.

It only takes one person, one small act of stepping from the dark to the light.

She felt some measure of relief knowing that in the very least, on the open road she would have some time to think.

There is no faith like the faith of a builder of homes in coastal Louisiana

But when friends would ask Kathy whether they, too, should start their own business, she talked them out of it. You don’t run the business, she would say. The business runs you.

Are the kids at school?" "No, they're in the lake. My God.

The country he had left thirty years ago had been a realistic place. There were political realities there, then and now, that precluded blind faith, that discouraged one from thinking that everything, always, would work out fairly and equitably. But he had come to believe such things in the United States. Things had worked out. Difficulties had been overcome. He had worked hard and achieved success. The machinery of government functioned.

His frustration with some Americans was like that of a disappointed parent. He was so content in this country, so impressed with and loving of its opportunities, but then why, sometimes, did Americans fall short of their best selves?