“They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town,”

“But it hadn't just been Sebastian who had been watching me. Rather, it had been tribes of merman and mermaids, who had been curious about this newcomer in town that could outswim any school of small fish.”

“The side whiskers indeed were quite handsome. But he stroked them so very zealously that looking at him, one might very well think that first just the side whiskers had been brought into the world, and then later the gentleman was attached to them in order to stroke them.”

“There were not many people who could say that their education had been paid for with cigarettes.”

“in my first Americanclass—a freshman chemistry class during the 1969-70 academic year—they looked at me as though I was supposed to be their nurse becausethey were paying a stiff tuition. That's another concept I had to learn—in American private schools we worked for them because they paid thetuition, but in Egypt we were educating them.”

“The deeper education consists in unlearning one's first education.”