The Coin Quotes

“By the time we know ourselves, we are already. That is the problem of childhood. It takes you a couple of years to grow up, to be conscious, to make decisions, and by then it's already too late, it's just a race against those fateful years.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“When Netanyahu and Trump were elected I thought those were good days, because the truth had come to light. But it seemed not only that the truth was ugly, but also that ugly was beautiful. The people adore the monster, the rich want to look poor.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I was tempted to buy a TV, they are very friendly and comforting. You can just be with them, passively, breathe and every few minutes swallow and once in a while go to the bathroom.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I used to think that if people saw the real face of wickedness, not the mask, then they would revolt. I used to be a proponent of transparency. When Netanyahu and Trump were elected I thought those were good days, because the truth had come to light. But it seemed not only that the truth was ugly, but also that ugly was beautiful. The people adore the monster, the rich want to look poor.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“He asked if he was the 9/11 denier. No, definitely not a denier, but very vocal when Bush invaded Iraq. That was all I needed to say for the conversation to end. Nobody wanted to talk about anything that happened outside America, they only wanted to talk about food and television and the mold on the third floor at Franklin, which was giving everyone allergies.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“Art is about taste, and taste is formed by experience, I said. Don’t ever let anybody dictate your taste, it’s as absurd as someone dictating your memory.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“Dirt was my first hypothesis. It had its way of going where nothing else would go, and I kept seeing it, on surfaces, in corners, underneath furniture and long nails. I always noticed it, which is not unusual, because I noticed many things, beautiful things too. I saw colors, birds moving in trees. I had been gifted with the pleasure of all of these, together with my suffering of all of these, and especially the dirt. Everywhere. And in New York, so much of it. Stubborn and full of the promise of disease.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“Americans are very protective of their children, maybe because it's the only country in the world with the cultural practice of school shootings.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“Why is it that the rich are uptight and the poor are themselves?”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“In a way, sleep was my closest ally, because it broke time apart. If my existence had been continuous, I wouldn’t have made it.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“It was too dirty for me to keep, but I imagined it wasn’t too dirty for a stranger.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“Maybe pretense was all there was. Fashion is pretense, education is pretense, personality, too, is a form of internalized pretense. I wondered what my true essence would be, if I were solitary, in nature, untamed and unconditioned.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I was happy alone, in the depths of my mind. There was no one to arouse my shame.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I come from a land that is a graveyard. For millennia, all kinds of people were born there, they died there, or were killed, and some were even resurrected or reborn. It was bloody, haunted, and doomed, but it belonged to mankind. Nature in America was uncivilized and untamed. I didn’t know how to read it. If a deer was some kind of warning sign, I wouldn’t have known.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“No, I’m not tired of you. Not yet. There is still something material between us, I still have things to say. But in the end, I will get tired. Or I will get bored and I will end it.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“Trenchcoat was my return to glamour. When I say return, I’m not talking about the past, I mean a feeling inside, a feeling that I was good enough, very good, better than others, the best. I don’t think it’s arrogant to think this, I think it’s natural, a way of being that can guarantee one’s survival in the era of wolves.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“My horror turned unexpectedly into pleasure. I imagined myself going outside with a gun and spraying down Fort Greene with all its rich and poor. I could give the gun to one of the brothers who ran the Smoke Shop, tell him to empty it. He’d be glad to do it after I’d killed his entire family. Free Yemen.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I asked the students to stand up while reading their compositions in class, to hone their confidence, and Leonard at first kept staring at the carpet but slowly I noticed him looking up, raising his voice, facing the inevitable exposure that it is to be alive among others, especially in New York, where he couldn’t afford to be introverted.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“So do you want to go to a doctor? he asked. No, I answered, I’m sure if I go there they’ll give me a painkiller and charge me a thousand dollars. Or they’ll tell me I have cancer and I’m going to die and charge me a hundred thousand dollars just to make sure. No, Sasha, I don’t want to die in America,”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“Sometimes we have to become independent of our families, not because we don’t love them but because they weigh us down.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I’ve always been motivated by pleasure, never by money, because money I had enough of and pleasure one cannot possess.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“The more contradictions in your life, the more complex your identity, the harder your soul, the more difficult it is to love and be loved.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“Well, at the time I thought speaking would only make everything worse. But with you I see that naming the thing makes it smaller. Pain can be a great field of suffering, or pain can be just an object.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“they were all miserable, overworked, and joyless.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“America looked gloomier to me than in the pictures. There were crackheads in the streets and cokeheads in the high-rises. And there was what America had done abroad, in Vietnam, in Guatemala, and especially to my people. That makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, how could the devil be the dream?”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“ray of sunlight. As you can imagine, this was quite a revelation. You”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“No, my apartment wasn't dirty. Nature is clean. It's civilization that's dirty.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I was a clean woman then, you could say. In cleanliness, I invested money, time, attention. But it was not enough. The dirt kept piling, pain is an accumulation.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I'm a moral woman, that all I want is to be clean.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin

“I lay down on the mat, time slowed down. There was nothing, not even birds, only water. I remembered that on the car radio, as we were driving up, it was reported that fifty-five people were killed in Gaza, and I felt a pinch in my chest. But when I looked up at the trees, at the sky, I saw that nothing was changed.”
― Yasmin Zaher, The Coin