11 Quotes by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

I am a woman and a warrior. If you think I can't be both, you've been lied to.

There is a goodness in the world that got me through, that taught me it's important to know who you are.

I don’t understand why we were shelled.” Mama speaks soft, like she thinks we’re all asleep, like she’s afraid to wake us. Abu Sayeed says nothing at first. The car’s tires hum. The engine clacks and complains. “We may never understand,” he replies, just as quiet. “In times like these, it’s the small people who suffer.

She had thought the open sea would be flat, like a mirror or a coin. But it had colors and shapes, turning green or black under approaching storm. Sometimes it was red and purple and silver and white gold. It had sharp hedges. It had its tempers, its blue spells, its fits of laughter

The most important places on a map are the places we haven't been yet

A hard red knot glues itself to my ribs like indigestion, the tangled-up knot of all the things I've loved that will be buried one day, all the things I know I am bound to forget.

The elegant figures of the constellations spun above them, driven by the wheel of the heavens.

Stories are powerful,” he said, “but gather too many of the words of others in your heart, and they will drown out your own. Remember that.

Every place you go becomes a part of you. But none more so than home.