“God, she was beautiful - my first image of the Orient - a woman such as only the desert poet knew how to praise: her face was the sun, her hair the protecting shadow, her eyes fountains of cool water, her body the most slender of palm-trees and her smile a mirage.”

“Yes indeed, both Muslim and Jewish!I, her father, am Muslim, at least on paper; her mother is Jewish, at least in theory. With us, religion is transmitted through the father; among Jews, through the mother. Therefore, according to the Muslims, Nadia was Muslim; according to the Jews, she was Jewish. She herself might have chosen one or the other, or neither, she chose to be both at once...Yes, both at once and more. She was proud of all the bloodlines that had converged in her, roads of conquest or exile from central Asia, Anatolia, the Ukraine, Arab, Bessarabia, Armenia, Bavaria...She refused to divide out her blood, her soul.”

“Gelmek bir yolun sonuna varmak değil, insan her menzilde bir yere varır.”

“We are not just visitors on this planet, it belongs to us just as we belong to her, its past is ours, so is its future.”

“Someone other than I might have used the word “roots”. It is not part of my vocabulary. I don’t like the word, and I like even less the image it conveys. Roots burrow into the ground, twist in the mud, and thrive in darkness; they hold trees in captivity from their inception and nourish them at the price of blackmail: “Free yourself and you’ll die”

“I am the son of the road , my country is a caravan and my life is the most unexpected of voyages. i belong to earth and to the god and it is to them that I will one day soon return”

“When faced with a chaotic and convoluted situation, one always thinks that it will take centuries to sort it out. Suddenly a man appears and as if by magic, the tree we thought was doomed takes on new life and starts bearing leaves and fruits and giving shade." (Shireen in Samarkand)”