“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”

“He went to America, months ago!America!Yes - America. Is that east or west? West. People travel east, my boy - from the east you get wheat and cloth and every other good thing. What ever made our Hammad go west? Didn't anyone offer him directions? Didn't he ask anyone? ”

“Ultimately, I found my instincts mirrored in a line from Thoreau: 'My needle...always settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more exhausted and richer on that side.”

“The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.”

“Living is like driving," my grandmother used to say. "You have to pick a lane." Have I chosen the right lane? It feels like this place, this moment in time, lies exactly halfway between my past and my future.”

“He was my North, my South, my East and West,My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”