“Words on a page were seductive, free, inviting everyone, without distinction.”

“All through life there were distinctions - toilets for men, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women - then, at the end, the graves are identical.”

“The sweetest things in life were not necessarily what one strove for and grabbed. Instead, many many times the All-Merciful, the All-Generous would give His servants without being petitioned, without waiting to be asked.”

“This was where she belonged with Nur, right here, here in his songs. Here within the lyrics they were intimate, caught in the rythm of his words, proppelled by the substance of his dreams.These songs would be their story and these lyrics their home.”

“In the distant past, Muslim doctors advised nervous people to look up at the sky. Forget the tight earth. Imagine that the sky, all of it, belonged to them alone. Crescent, low moon, more stars than the eyes looking up at them. But the sky was free, without any price, no one I knew spoke of it, no one competed for it. Instead, one by one those who could afford it began to sleep indoors in cool air-conditioned rooms, away from the mosquitoes and the flies...”

“The blow, inevitable in itself, comes straight from the source without any intermediaries.”

“Doctora Zainab looks at her watch. I should leave. But Mai carries her book and sits next to me. She wants me to read it for her. I start to read 'This is the House that Jack Built' and I forget Doctora Zainab's presence there is only Mai's attention and Tamer looking at us. For as long as the book lasts, we are poised, no future, no past.-Minaret”