“Festivals and fasts are unhinged, traveling backward at a rate of ten days per year, attached to no season. Even Laylat ul Qadr, the holiest night in Ramadan, drifts--its precise date is unknown. T...”

“What naive garbage. People don't want freedom anymore--even those to whom freedom is a kind of religion are afraid of it, like trembling acolytes who make sacrifices to some pagan god. People want ...”

“The few Americans he had encountered in his lifetime had all seemed flat to him, as if freedom weakened one's capacity for intense emotion by demanding too little of it.”

“How dense and literal it is. I thought it had a much more sophisticated brain." "Your mother is dense," Alif said wearily. "My mother was an errant crest of sea foam. But that is neither here nor t...”

“The force that played havoc with the cortisol in my blood was the same force that helped my body recover; if I felt better one day and worse the next, it was unchanged. It chose no side. It gave th...”

“So the stories aren't just stories, is what you're saying. They're really secret knowledge disguised as stories.""One could say that of all stories, younger brother.”

“So the criminals win, that's what you're saying? For now they do. But it's a long game, Jamison. And I always play for the long game.”

“So the criminals win, that's what you're saying? For now they do. But it's a long game, Jamison. And I always play for the long game.”

“Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”

“As time and space are bent by gravity, so too is truth bent by power.”

“What a curious power words have.”

“Circumstances will change and things will be fine, just hold on a little more”

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”