“The dead have need of fairy tales too.”

Even if we love someone very much, at times it happens that we forget about it.

Forgive me also that I didn’t fight like Lord Byron for the happiness of captive peoples that I watched only risings of the moon and museums.

I could write a treatise on the sudden transformation of life into archaeology

I thank You Lord for creating the world beautiful and various and if this is Your seduction I am seduced for good and past all forgiveness

I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience.

Be courageous when the mind deceives you Be courageous In the final account only this is important

Study the world’s skin before you set out to look for its heart.

No time to grieve for roses when the forests are burning.

And if the City falls and one survives he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile he shall be the City

I mean, it is the perfect situation to really love someone to death and to want to rip their clothes off at the same time, isn’t it?

When a black girl dies; the last thing to decompose is her heart.

If you want an enemy, the soul (nafs) is sufficient. If you want advice, death is sufficient.

My favorite preacher is not with me anymore, and that’s my father.

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.

People who are born round don’t die square.

Probably the undertaker thinks less of death than almost any other man. He is so accustomed to it that his mind must involuntarily turn from its horror to a contemplation of how much he makes out of the burial.

My father passed away in 1942, and three-four months after his death, I had to start working. There was a responsibility on my shoulders to run the household. It was my duty as the eldest child in the house.