Trouble is, these people don’t understand their own culture, said
They knew that what they hoped for from the operation was to safeguard their daughters’ chastity, because upon that chastity depended the honor of the girls’ fathers and brothers.
You English palisade yourselves up behind 'must nots' and I commence to think it is a barren fortress in which you wall yourselves. - Caleb
Why would I marry? I'm not made to be any man's chattel. I have my work, which I love. I have my home - it is not much, I grant, yet sufficient for my shelter. But more than these, I have something ve...
Well, I have five brothers—Rest, Thankful, Watching, Patience, Consider—and each one of them the very opposite of their name.
We were too intelligent, too cynical for war. Of course, you don't have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death.
To the gnarled old imam, sending his daughters out of the home—to walk in the streets, even if veiled, to sit among strangers, even if all girls—was wicked. His
To the contrary, he knew the ascetic beauty of such a way of being. He lived every moment mindful of the 613 commandments of the Torah. It was natural to him to separate the milk from the meat, to ref...
The two most sacred documents known to man are the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. Better that a whole generation of men, women, and children should pass away by violent death than a word o...
The good young man went out and I felt the great relief that simple kindness can work. It is a salve of the spirit, surely.
Sometimes, I think if you took all the universities and all the hospitals out of greater Boston, you’d be able to fit what’s left into about six city blocks
She must not speak in a delicate tone. This is from the Koran. Things begun with a few words will continue to other things.
She beckoned me to follow her, and we passed from the portico into rooms whose magnificence has stolen the words from the mouths of the poets.
One did not need to penetrate David's secret counsels or insinuate a man in his bodyguard. All one needed was a pair of years and access to the royal precincts. Just to eavesdrop upon his singing was...
Often the women are burned, so that the death can be passed off as an accident. The killer usually becomes a local hero: a man who has done what was necessary to clear his family name.
My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly.
I’ve watched them. Watched them walking with this stupid smile on their faces into the biggest risk you can take in this life.
It’s so easy for people like me—a diplomat’s son raised abroad and educated in America—to be totally off base about this country and what it is ready to accept.
It was a voice full of light and dark. Light not only as it glimmers, but also as it glares. Dark not only as it brings cold and fear, but also as it gives rest and shade.
It is the habit of our species to despoil all we touch. Yet few see it so.