“...and that spark will flash in her eyes confirming that her mind never stops working, even in the heat of passion.”

“Sheikh Bilal had takenhim aside the day before the wedding and spoken to him of marriageand his wife’s rights in the Law, stressing to him that there was nothingfor a Muslim to feel shy about in marrying a woman who was not avirgin and that a Muslim woman’s previous marriage ought not to be aweak point that her new husband could exploit against her. He saidsarcastically, “The secularists accuse us of puritanism and rigidity,even while they suffer from innumerable neuroses. You’ll find that ifone of them marries a woman who was previously married, thethought of her first husband will haunt him and he may treat herbadly, as though punishing her for her legitimate marriage. Islam hasno such complexes.”

“She had lost her compassion for people and a thick crust of indifference had formed around her feelings - that disgust that afflicts the exhausted, the frustrated, and the perverted and prevents them from sympathizing with others.”

“It became clear to her that all men, however respectable in appearance and however elevated their position in society, were utter weaklings in front of a beautiful woman. - The Yacoubian Building, p. 42”

“Education, medical treatment, and work are the natural rights of every citizen in the world.”

“The writer of fiction is not a scholar but an artist impacted emotionally by characters from life, who then strives to present these in his works. These characters present us with human truth but do not necessarily represent social truth.”

“He had worked out long ago that police officers evaluated a citizen on thebasis of three factors—his appearance, his occupation, and the way hespoke; according to this assessment, a citizen in a police station wouldeither be treated with respect or despised and beaten.”