“She was sitting in a garden more beautiful than even her rampaging imagination could ever have conjured up, and she was being serenaded by trees.”

“Even, she thought, even without the gift of witchsight, there was more beauty to be found in the world than could ever be snared in language or music. And with the sight...”

“..however she was a woman and I'd have more luck conjuring up the thoughts of a chinaman than I would figuring out what she was conspiring”

“She could no longer see herself without him somewhere in her life, & there was no one she could even imagine being her 1st besides him.”

“I think that her life was about finding the extraordinary in every day. It was how she could sit in her garden on a rainy day and see the beauty in it. It's what got her out of bed every morning.”

“Manto's take on Ismat:"Ismat’s pen and tongue both run fast. When she starts writing, her ideas race ahead and the words cannot catch up with them. When she speaks, her words seem to tumble over one another. If sheenters the kitchen to show her culinary skill, everything will be in a mess. Being hasty by nature, she would conjure up the cooked roti in her mind even before she had finished kneading the dough. The potatoes would note yet be peeled although she would have already finished making the curry in her imagination. I feel sometimes she may just go into the kitchen andcome out again afer being satiated by her imagination.”