“Water was a wild, capricious substance: nothing solid, nothing permanent, nothing as it appeared.”

“Nothing´s permanent. Nothing.”

“I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.”

“Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other; nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking; and the result is a structure of absolute balance and solid composure.”

“Everything had shattered. The fact that it was all still there — the walls and the chairs and the children’s pictures on the walls — meant nothing. Every atom of it had been blasted apart and reconstituted in an instant, and its appearance of permanence and solidity was laughable; it would dissolve at a touch, for everything was suddenly tissue-thin and friable.”

“Nothing is permanent but change.”