“Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.”

Over and over, we begin again.

Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.

Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated.

The night glittered brilliantly then.

I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn’t up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.

Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who’ve been through something traumatic.

I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it.

The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free.

People aren’t overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.

Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.

Even when I try to stir myself up, I just get irritated because I can’t make anything come out. And in the middle of the night I lie here thinking about all this. If I don’t get back on track somehow, I’m dead, that’s the sense I get. There isn’t a single strong emotion inside me.

I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn’t grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.

Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?’ I laughed. ‘Could it be that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)” (p. 3).

When someone tells you something big, it’s like you’re taking money from them, and there’s no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening.

I never tell my boyfriend that I’m busy when I’m not. No matter how effective they are, cheap techniques like that just don’t agree with me. So it’s always okay, it’s always all right. In my opinion the surest way to hook a man is to be as open with him as possible.

I am not a prisoner of my sexuality like men younger than myself although I write about being a prisoner.

Page 61: No matter where I go in the world, although I can’t speak any foreign language.

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people.

I think the elections have gone well, although there is so much insecurity in Iraq. So far during the counting of ballots.

My parents told us how they felt but never imposed their beliefs on us, although I appreciate I got a healthy sense of democracy from them.

I don’t feel I ever played the victim, although I was always in jeopardy.

So in that respect I could be called one, although I don’t think I’ll go off the rails.

I’m a big soccer fanatic, and although I support a team called Tottenham Hotspur in London –