Basma Saad > Basma's Quotes

“Why we ask questions: Questions are the basis of human freedom. Our mind, as a part of our  self experience, is curious and always challenging that part of us that can think about the essence of things. We interpret our lives all the time - with unconscious deep conceptualization - and these conceptualization raise questions.
Why did I feel the way I felt yesterday when I spoke with X? What is the meaning of my answer? Why I chose to spend time in X's company and not Y's? And how it changed my attitude toward Y?
(Interesting paragraph I translated from the Hebrew edition)”
― Christopher Bollas, The Infinite Question

“Past and history are not the same. Past is what happened. It consists of events that affected the patient's self, some of which he can remember, but the most he is having trouble remembering. History is transforming the past to a story that the person tells himself. Sometimes, the story stems from the past, but even the most sincere patient's history is more like a myth.
(Translated from the Hebrew edition).”
― Christopher Bollas, The Infinite Question

“What we so admire and call "single minded dedication" was really "obsessive self-involvement". What in that exactly is admirable?”
― Harlan Coben, Live Wire

“She fell silent, remembering the jolt of envy and longing she’d felt when she’d framed the Browns in her viewfinder. Now, weeks and miles later, it was another jolt for Bryan to realize she hadn’t brushed off the peculiar feeling. She has managed to put it aside, somewhere to the back of her mind, but it popped out again now as she thought of the couple in the bleachers of a small-town park.

Family, cohesion. Bonding. Did some people just keep promises better than others? she wondered. Or where some people simply unable to blend their lives with someone’s else, make those adjustments, the compromises?

When she looked back, she believed both she and Rob had tried, but in their own ways. There’d been no meeting of the minds, but two separate thought patterns making decisions that never melded with each other. Did that mean that a successful marriage depended on the mating of two people who thought along the same lines?

With a sigh, she turned onto the highway that would lead them into Tennessee. If it was true, she decided, she was much better off single. Though she’d met a great many people she liked and could have fun with, she’d never met anyone who thought the way she did. Especially the man seated next to her with his nose already buried in the newspaper. There alone they were radically different.”
For more quotes visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com”
― Nora Roberts, Summer Pleasures

“Bucket had started his criminal career in Braas, not far from when Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There he had gotten together with some like-minded peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newsstand was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who has chosen the name- The Violence, in English, not swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English.

The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar academic success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake.
So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braas from the people in charge of the concert hall in Vaxjo. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music, they might like to put in am appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra, Musica Viate.

Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newsstand, and instead went into Vaxjo to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible lesson in respect. It all went well, except that Bucket’s leather glove happened to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the personal item in question.

Losing the glove was not good. Bucket had traveled to Vaxjo by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braas that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and adress inside the glove, in case he lost it."
For more quotes from the novel visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com”
― Jonas Jonasson, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

“People could behave how they liked, but Allan considered that in general it was quite unnecessary to be grumpy if you had the chance not to.”
― Jonas Jonasson, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

“I shall destroy capitalism! Do you hear! I shall destroy every single capitalist! And I shall start with you, you dog, if you don't help us with the bomb!'
Allan noted that the had managed to be both a rat and a dog in the course of a minute or so. And that Stalin was being rather inconsistent, because now he wanted to use Allan's services after all.
But Allan wasn't going to sit there and listen to this abuse any longer. He had come to Moscow to help them out, not to be shouted at. Stalin would have to manage on his own.
'I've been thinking,' said Allan.
'What,' said Stalin angrily.
'Why don't you shave off that moustache?'
With that the dinner was over, because the interpreter fainted.”
― Jonas Jonasson, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

“That's why I like listening to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all his performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of - that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally I find that encouraging.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“يجب أن تنظر، وهذه قاعدة أخرى من قواعدنا. اغماض العينين لن بغير شيء. لا شيء سيختفي لمجرد أنك لا تريد أن تراه. بل، ستجد أن الامر ازداد سوءاً في المرة التالية التي تنظر فيها. هذا هو العالم الذي نحيا فيه. أبق عينيك مفتوحتين على وسعهما. الجبان فقط هو من يغمض عينيه. اغماض عينيك وسد أذنيك لن يوقف الزمن." (on page 194 of 621)”
― هاروكي موراكامي - كافكا على الشاطيء