Leila Aboulela

"Im not middle-class; I do not have a degree. I am upper-class without money."

"I wanted to be good but I wasnt sure if I was prepared."

"Control yourself, it is not worth it. You will regret your rudeness afterwards, your sensitive nature will be troubled."

"The blow, inevitable in itself, comes straight from the source without any intermediaries."

"In the distant past, Muslim doctors advised nervous people to look up at the sky. Forget the tight earth. Imagine that the sky, all of it, belonged to them alone. Crescent, low moon, more stars than the eyes looking up at them. But the sky was free, without any price, no one I knew spoke of it, no one competed for it. Instead, one by one those who could afford it began to sleep indoors in cool air-conditioned rooms, away from the mosquitoes and the flies..."

"The Mercy of Allah is an Ocean, Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean. It only has to open its beak."