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Haste is the work of the Devil

In Sarah's opinion, love was a two-faced goddess who liberated you and at the same time enslaved you

Men are hunters, always seeking their fortune far away. We women are gatherers and search every inch of the ground for seeds and herbs. Sometimes we find a story that's like a seed, so small you overlook it although it has life in it and is tough enough to survive even if an elephant treads on it. Stories and seeds. That's why women love stories more than men do. That's why they make a better audience.

Arabic script could have been made to be music for the eye. As it is always cursive, the length of the link between the characters plays a large part in the composition. The lengthening or shortening of this link is to the eye like the extension or reduction of the time for which a musical note is held to the ear

The internal music of calligraphy works on the brain and then opens up the way to the heart- like music when you don't know its origin or what it is about, but you enjoy it all the same.

Can you write me a letter with hidden words of love that go straight to the heart but don't seem ridiculous to the mind?"..."How can words reach the heart without passing through the gateway of the mind?"

He had yet to learn that you can't decide not to fall in love, just as you can't decide not to die

The coup & the president's exile left Asmahan the whore cold. "Men are all the same to me. Once they're naked I don't see any difference b/w a vegetable seller and a general,"she said callously."Nudity is better camoflage than a carnival mask."

suddenly a whole sentence slipped out of the tangled lines...Nasri was surprised to find how easily the text could be read, but after a few minutes it was blurring in front of his eyes again. Only the single words Allah, Shishakli, and leader were still clear. The rest were lost in the forest of golden letters.

Calligraphy-Tawfiq was right- has a magical effect on an Arab. Even the whore had gone to extraordinary lengths to please him since the day when he first gave her a piece of calligraphy. She wept with joy when she saw the famous calligrapher's signature under the beautifully written aphorism about love "The Wisdom of Love is its Madness"

She liked his desire for her, but she herself felt nothing."That will come in time. I'm sure it will," one of her girlfriends consoled her. But her friend was wrong.

often, in her imagination, she put together the man of her dreams out of separate parts: he would have the eyes of a beggar, the mind and brain of her father, the wit of the ice-seller, the passion of the bean-seller, the voice of the singer Farid al-Attrash and the elegant bearing of Tyrone Power

Try to understand the rippling of the waves, the enchanting green of orange leaves, the white of Jasmine flowers, the slender palm trees, and you'll find that they have all mastered the art of elegance

And finally he mentioned the remark that had shaken him so much, that she loved words in fine script better than she loved men. The calligrapher wrote it all down. He envied this rich man for loving a woman who herself loved calligraphy

Yes, anything that is to be written in fine calligraphic script, as long as the wording does not offend God and his Prophet

Salman took time off at Easter and went to early Mass with his mother. She walked proudly up the nave of the church, and sat down in the front pew, just like a princess...when she went up to take communion and the priest recognized her, his mouth dropped open. He forgot to say "This is the body of Christ" to Salman, who was following his mother, and stared in astonishment at the elegant apparition as she walked on

It was some time before Salman realized that Darwish seemed friendly as a nun but was really as venomous as a cobra. Samih used to say that if you gave Darwish your hand, you'd better chech that you still had all your fingers afterward

It was her father's opinion that the first ever to play hide and seek had been Adam and Eve, when they hid from God after eating the forbidden fruit. When it was Noura's turn to hide, she imagined she was Eve, and whoever was looking for her was none other than God.

Nadia was a quit, red-haired, rather plump girl.She didn't like either school or books. Even at the age of seven, what she wanted was to get married and have thirty children

noticing how she washed rice

Water is a part of Paradise, and that is why no mosque is without it. When I sit here listening to the music of the fountain I am going back to my origin in my mother's womb. Or even farther back, to the sea, and I hear its waves breaking on the coast, like the sound of the my mother's heartbeat," he told her once when she had been sitting close to him watching him for a long time.

He recommended tomatoes, carrots, figs and bananas, dill, peppermint, and sage for soothing men's passions, and advised ginger, coriander, pepper, artichokes, pomegranates, and apricots as stimulants. And he always recommended the women to perfume themselves with neroli oil, which they could distil themselves from bitter orange blossom.

Neither my father's money nor your father's books make people happy," he told her. "It's all in the heart."

finally

how hard it was to leave your soul mate once you'd found them

All his life Salman never forgot that hunger, and whenever he wanted to say something had taken a very long time, he said it was "longer than a day spent starving."

fat Maurice told her God was sure to like beautiful girls, but he couldn't hear their voices.And Maurice knew why:"The grown-ups pray in such loud voices that it gives God a headache, and heaven closes before he's heard even a single child's wish."-Noura looked at the assembled company,and knew that Maurice was right.She suddenly called out loud,right in the middle of the prayer"-vanilla ice cream with pistachios"

For years Noura believed that her mother really could read any wrongdoing in her face, so every time she had met the fat boy she looked in the mirror to see if it showed. To be on the safe side she scrubbed her face with olive soap, and then rinsed it thoroughly.

I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams-W.B.Yeats