51 Quotes by Ahdaf Soueif

You know, I've been thinking: all the women in the books you like -- Sartre and Camus and all that -- they don't really exist. Not as people. They're only there to wait for the men. To love them and be loved back or not -- mostly not; to be beaten up or killed; to appear as a face on the wall of Meurseault's cell--

He stands his ground but she can see him collapse. He looks like a man in a film the moment after he's been shot and before he falls to the ground -

It is so pleasant, so deeply peaceful: spending the day with you.

Even God would say"Finish the task you have undertaken". He would never recommend breaking her mother's heart, damaging her parents' lives. "Your mother and then your mother and then your mother," the Prophet had said, "and then your father." But what about her own life? What is to become of that?

آه لو رأيت حقول قصب السكر العالي أو زهر الكتان في الوانه الأزرق والبنفسجي، لو رأيت الأطفال يجمعون القطن في جيوب صنعوها من جلابيبهم كجيوب الكنغر، لو رأيت اشجار الصفصاف العتيقة وشعورها مدلاة في القنوات الجارية، والرهبان عائدين إلى صوامعهم في الأديرة، ونداء المؤذن يرتفع عالياً في السماء الضاربة إلى الاحمرار ساعة المغرب، فهذه أرض يتجلى فيها الله بلا انقطاع

She had been wrong to think it wouldn't matter that much to him, yes, he took her for granted, of course he did , but he took her for granted - not like an old coat in the corner of a dark cupboard, as she'd put it to herself , but like the very air that he breathed .

كفاح لا ينقدم إلا قيد انملة،و العالم من حولنا يهدر كالإعصار

So. Tell me. What do you think? Which is better? To take action and perhaps make a fatal mistake - or to take no action and die slowly anyway?

Painting is a kind of visual poetry as poetry is a kind of verbal painting.