Reham Taha

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“Some of the fighters wear the best uniforms, do the best drills, but hardly anyone has seen them fighting. Some you won't even think that they are fighters, but they are the best knights on the battlefield.”
― Zain Hashmi, A Blessed Olive Tree: A Spiritual Journey in Twenty Short Stories

“إن كل عذاب نصاب به فى هذه الدنيا حق وعدل لأننا نتفانى فى حبها على حين أنها لا تستحق إلا المقت.”
― Naguib Mahfouz, السراب

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves