“...telling her the story of a girl who ran away from her faceless youth only to name herself after a flower that opens like something torn apart.”
Source: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
“Even when you looked the part, your tongue outed you. One does not 'pass' in America, it seems, without English.”
Source: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
“It wasn't me, the boy thinks, who was inside my mother's womb, but this bullet, this seed I bloomed around.”
Source: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
“I think if Barthes again. A writer is someone who plays with the body of his mother, he says after the death of his own mother, in order to glorify it, to embellish it.”
Source: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
“The strays beyond the railroad are barking, which means something, a rabbit or possum, has just slipped out of its life and into the world.”
Source: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
“آه يا طائر الطفولة النائح
قل لي لِمَّ كل هذا النواح؟
قل لي لِمَ كل هذا العويل؟
آه يا طائري الذي صاحبني منذ الطفولة
لِمَ طبعت نواحك
وألصقت عويلك وآهاتك
في كل ضحكاتي
في كل ابتساماتي
في ملامحي
في نبراتي؟
آه يا رفيق الطفولة
لقد بات الجميع يتجنبني بسببك
لئلا أذكرهم بعويلهم الذي دفنوه
وصرخاتهم التي أخرسوها
ليتمكنوا من مواصلة العيش ...”
“He must have been one of those very special people, beloved of the gods, for whom time is elastic and can always be stretched out to play with a child.”
Source: Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection
“There was Sheila Walker who was six, and who, I am ashamed to say, Jean and I used to terrorize. She did ask for it - she grizzled and told tales - but still, we should not have fed her on dandelion leaves and then told her they were deadly poison. I see that now. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.”
Source: Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection
“The sage is sick of being sick (Tao Te Ching)”
Source: Real Happiness Challenge
“Childhood is the period when we are full of dreams. We jump, we fly and we soar. It is almost as if wings have been implanted on us and we are rocketing and gliding in the sky. Sometimes, we reach the stars, sometimes we talk to the moon and at other times we swing on the rainbow. And these dreams are unidirectional, that is, we learn only to aspire and hope; without even wondering there could be any stop to our flights of fantasy.”
Source: Lines of Fate: First Love and Other Stories