Laila Lalami

Somehow I had also convinced myself that my redemption could only come from some force outside of me-that if I were useful to others, they would save me. What a terrible thing to believe. I had to stop playing a part in my own misery. I had to save my own life. (p129)

I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it. (p8)

life should not be traded for gold (p87)

in those days, I fed my hopes of freedom in whichever way I could, without realizing that I was only hooking myself to different lures. (p88)

A name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing my ties to all those things too. (p5)

Telling a story is like sowing a seed—you always hope to see it become a beautiful tree, with firm roots and branches that soar up in the sky. But it is a peculiar sowing, for you will never know whether your seed sprouts or dies. (p122)

He warned me that trade would open the door to greed and greed was an inconsiderate guest; it would bring its evil relations with it. (p58)

I had been pushed further and further into a fate from which no escape or reprieve seemed possible. And so there came a moment when I stopped struggling, when I decided that I would cease making any more plans to return to the old days. I made up my mind to look upon the present as exactly what it was: it was all I had. (p232)

Nothing new has ever happened to a son of Adam, she said. Everything has already been lived and everything has already been told. If only we listened to the stories. (p52)