The Stationery Shop Quotes

“The past was always there, lurking in the corners, winking at you when you thought you'd moved on, hanging on to your organs from the inside.”
― Marjan Kamali , The Stationery Shop

“She would not have understood, then, that time is not linear but circular. There is no past, present, future. Roya was the woman she was today and the seventeen-year-old girl in the Stationery Shop, always. She and Bahman were one, and she and Walter were united. Kyle was her soul and Marigold would never die.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“You might think the world is complicated and full of lost souls, that people who've touched your life and disappeared will never be found, but in the end all of that can change.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Yes, she loved him. The truth of that was like a wave that washed over and submerged her in salty torrents, knotting her hair and stinging her nose, pulling the life out from under her. Of course she loved him. The earth was round, day turned into night, he was in front of her and she loved him.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She could spend an entire afternoon just looking at fountain pens and ink bottles or flipping through books that spoke of poetry and love and loss.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“It is a love from which we never recover.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She pressed her cheek against his heart and lay there, grateful for the time she’d had with him, however short or long it had been, grateful she had known him, grateful that once, when she was young, she had experienced a love so strong that it did not go away, that decades and distance and miles and children and lies and letters could never make it disappear. She held him in her arms and said to him all she needed to say.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“The truth is, my young lady, that fate has written the script for your destiny on your forehead from the very beginning. We can't see it. But it's there. And the young, who love so passionately, have no idea how ugly this world is....This world is without compassion.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“May you always be happy and may all your days be filled with beautiful words.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

Look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“In your presence, I found a calm.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Why doesn’t his heart let go? Why do some people stay lodged in our souls, stuck in our throats, imprinted in our minds?”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She would not have understood, then, that time is not linear but circular. There is no past, present, future. Roya was the woman she was today and the seventeen-year-old girl in the Stationery Shop, always. She and Bahman were one, and she and Walter were united. Kyle was her soul and Marigold would never die. The past was always there, lurking in the corners, winking at you when you thought you'd moved on, hanging on to your organs from the inside.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She found too much cheer undesirable, smacking of falseness. How did Americans keep up their good spirits day in, day out, year-round? It had to be the brand-shiny-newness of their country. It had to be all that freedom. No thousands of years' worth of stultifying rules to observe. Just easy-peasy rolling with the flow.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered. F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“He laughed. And when he did, his face opened up entirely. His eyes carried the laughter; they filled with a kindness that was breathtaking.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“In the fog of jasmine, she kissed him. It was like landing somewhere she should have been all along, a different plane, soft and unbelievably seductive—a place completely theirs but one she’d never dared explore.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“No one can take that education away from you once you have it. [...] You can take your degree from the university and put it in your pocket and it will be there for the rest of your life.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Roya’s favorite place in all of Tehran was the Stationery Shop. It was on the corner of Churchill Street and Hafez Avenue, opposite the Russian embassy and right across the street from her school.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“She was willing to accept a lot of things, but seeing her old lover for the first time in sixty years while wearing fat Eskimo boots was one of the few things she could not accept.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“The past was always there, lurking in the corners, winking at you when you thought you’d moved on, hanging on to your organs from the inside.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“You might think that the world is complicated and full of lost souls, that people who’ve touched your life and disappeared will never be found, but in the end all of that can change.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“It is a love for which we never recover.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Everything—every detail, every word, every second, every person—reminded Roya of Marigold. Except that reminded wasn’t the right word. Reminded meant that she had to forget to remember again. But she never forgot. Everything was linked to Marigold; nothing, really, could be separated from her ever.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“One day she might forget the helplessness of standing there while words burned. One day she might be far away from this terror. But the smell of charred paper would always be part of her, embedded in her skin.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Mr. Fakhri kept the shelves stocked with Persian classics and poetry and translations of literature from all over the world.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“Some things stay with you, haunt you. Some embers nestle into your skin.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

“No mom to come home to, call on the phone, cook a favorite dish with. No mom to tell her that everything would be all right.”
― Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop of Tehran