“Everyone who lived in high-up, magical places must feel the same way. You come down into the world and you mingle, but all the while there's something calling you back.”

“Instead of Orientals being the passive objects of the Western gaze, we must study the West. The way Orientals saw it must be a subject for deep investigation. Occidentalism is the other side of Orientalism”

“I feel like I am always the one tearing everything up and forever sewing it back together.”

“The world is 3 days: As for yesterday, it has vanished along with all that was in it. As for tomorrow, you may never see it. As for today, it is yours, so work on it.”

“If you want to call it that. But it is a very specific sort of magic. There's a magic you take from death. Something leaves the world, something else comes into it.”

“I wish humans could live twice: once to write scholarly works, the second to dedicate to the public”

“Why be miserable? After all, I am playing philosophy”