“Nothing can do what a book can do. Lifts you out of your life... to a whole new world, whole new perspective. A book is like a dream you're borrowing from a friend.”

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

“And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.”

“You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies. ”

“So that's what it's all about! You put your whole self in, you take your whole self out; you put your whole self in and you shake it all about. The idea is that by doing whatever you're doing with all of you, you can then take all of you out. The trick is how to do both.”

“Listen to me, Amin," I said slowly. "Listen to me very carefully. Nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again. There lives on this earth a woman who can be my friend and my lover. Do you understand that? Do you understand what a marvelous thing that is?""A friend is a friend," Uthman interrupted, "and a woman is a woman. You can't have them in one person. The whole world knows that.""If that's what the whole world knows, ...then the whole world is wrong. I believed the whole world, and I lost her.”