“in my first Americanclass—a freshman chemistry class during the 1969-70 academic year—they looked at me as though I was supposed to be their nurse becausethey were paying a stiff tuition. That's another concept I had to learn—in American private schools we worked for them because they paid thetuition, but in Egypt we were educating them.”

“It is we ourselves that we have to think about, no one else. That is the way the saints worked. They paid attention to what they were doing, and if others were attracted to them by their enterprise, why, well and good. But they looked to themselves first of all.”

“And I thought of us, years and years later, you and I, in Paris, and how you seemed to be saying we had every choice, every chance. You acted as though you were free, but you were a ransom note. I paid to watch. I watched your fingers, your red mouth. I watched you undress. I didn't see you go.Later I was still paying and I never counted the cost. You were worth it. Again and again you were worth it. My heart has unlimited funds. Draw on them. Draw them down. Draw me down on top of you. How much? Everything? All right.”

“- It's been going so well. We have a wonderful time in class, and I can feel the chemistry between you.- That's because it's chemistry class.”

“Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as though they had been unclean beasts. No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.”

“Thirty-nine years of my life had passed before I understood that clouds were not my enemy; that they were beautiful, and that I needed them. I suppose this, for me, marked the beginning of wisdom. Life is short.”