“The only way to rise above is to rise above. The only way to respond to wrong is with right. The only way to deal with injustice is to be just.”

“What I saw there explained everything--the reason he had stayed away, why he had come to say good-bye. I can only describe what I saw by its effect on me. Every woman should be looked at in such a way, at least once her life. With a longing that cannot be contained--with love that goes beyond mere feeling because it transforms and-like the verse of the poem he had read--it dissolves, as an offering, a gift. I felt my face flush and waves of knowing suffused every pore, every cell of my being. I was loved. And in that love, I felt beauty--my own, unrealized until that moment, suddenly rising to consciousness in a way that made everything in me come alive to the beauty all around me. Nothing more needed to be said.”

“You won't understand this now, Saira. Later, perhaps. When you are older. When you learn that life is not only about the choices you make. That some of them will be made for you.”

“The only law that means anything - that can have anything to do with God - is one that is alive and that strives for justice given the circumstances of the present. Otherwise, the law is merely something dead, a weapon in the hands of those with power. Against those with none.”

“There is an old Arab Bedouin saying: I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world. That is jungle law. It is the way of the world when the world is thrown into chaos. It is our job to avert that chaos, to fight against it, to resist the urge to become savage. Because the problem with such law is that if you follow it, you are always fighting against someone.”

“These tears are proof that there is love in the world. Tears are only bitter when we cry selfishly for ourselves. When we deny and forget the sweet love that tears are made of. When we let sorrow turn to anger. When people cry for each other, it is a good thing. Always remember that you are a human being, connected to all other human beings. When you cry for others you are opening your heart to God, who must see what we do and weep for us, too, for the suffering we cause to one another and to ourselves.”

“Faith is revelation. And in order to receive revelation you have to be open. Belief is about closing yourself off -- a lie you tell yourself to make the world fit in with how you've decided it should be. Real faith is an action - a verb. It's truth unfolding.”