“Everything that happened to you is a page that’s been turned and is done with.”

Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate.

On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.

If you can’t find good in your own country, you won’t find it anywhere else.

Egyptians are like camels: they can put up with beatings, humiliation and starvation for a long time but when they rebel they do so suddenly and with a force that is impossible to control.

Revolution is like a love story. When you are in love, you become a much better person.

A fascinating book and a great pleasure to read:

I am according to my slave’s expectations of me: if good, then good, and if bad, then bad.

One doesn’t need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt.

Betool Khedairi is a talented new voice in fiction.

And when you are in revolution, you become a much better person.

It has been women who have breathed gentleness and care into the hard progress of humankind.

The biggest surprise has been making the adjustment after losing a game.

I’ve been homeless. I’ve worked at 7-Eleven.

I have been the only female minister in every government department I’ve worked in.

It’s always been my formula to get the next picture set up before anyone’s seen the last one.

Why it’s been left to me to smooth things over, I don’t know. Dennis Rodman, of all people.

The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person.

I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, “What did they teach you?” And she said, “They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room.”