“A virgin's silence is the proper answer to a marriage proposal; it signifies a dignified consent.”

“There are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.”

“However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.”

“It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of secual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values. The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.”

“I would not have put it this way in those days, but because I was born a woman, I could never become an adult. I would always be a minor, my decisions made for me. I would always be a unit in a vast beehive. I might have a decent life, but I would be dependent—always—on someone treating me well. I knew that another kind of life was possible. I had read about it, and now I could see it, smell it in the air around me: the kind of life I had always wanted, with a real education, a real job, a real marriage. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to become a person, an individual, with a life of my own.”

“On September 16,1978, there was an eclipse of the moon in Riyadh. Late one afternoon it became visible: a dark shadow moving slowly across the face of the pale moon in the darkening blue sky. There was a frantic knocking on the door.When I opened it, our neighbor asked if we were safe. He said it was the Day of Judgment, when the Quran says the sun will rise from the west and the seas will flood, when all the dead will rise and Allah's angels will weigh our sins and virtue, expediting the good to Paradise and the bad to Hell. Though it was barely twilight, the muezzin suddenly called for prayer—not one mosque calling carefully after the other, as they usually did, but all the mosques clamoring all at once, all over the city. There was shouting across the neighborhood. When I looked outside I saw people praying in the street. Now more neighbors came knocking,asking us to pardon past misdeeds. They told us children to pray for them, because children's prayers are answered most. The gates of Hell yawned open before us. We were panicked.... but the next morning, the sun was safely in its usual place, fat and implacable, and the world wasn't ending after all.”

“I didn't like the endless gossiping or the constant complaints that they were victims of external factors. Somalis never said "Sorry" or "I made a mistake" or "I don't know": they invented excuses. All these group strategies to avoid confronting reality depressed me. Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn't make it easier.”