“We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart.”

“the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.”

“Thank you, I answered, unsure of the proper American response to her gracious enthusiasm. In the Arab world, gratitude is a language unto itself. May Allah bless the hands that give me this gift; B...”

“I loved her in spite of myself. I loved her immeasurably.Infinitely. And I feared that love as much as I feared my own fury at theworld.”

“She loved beyond measure, When I was young I thought her cold. But in time I came to understand that she was too tender for the world shed been born into, I said. Sorrow gave Dalia an iron gift. Be...”

“Always" is a good word to believe in.”

“Don't cry over someone who wouldn't cry over you.”

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: youre falling to the floor crying ...”

“Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it's over, you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up.”

“There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meani...”

“Though there had yet to be a victor in this great war that had begun almost three years ago, Maurice had written to her that they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. Freedom to thin...”

“Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.”

“I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air ...”