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Better to be strong than pretty and useless.

‘Your naibs are greedy. They need to be taught a lesson. Money is like grass. It withers...but our deeds last forever.' (p233)

[she] did not want the flickering images of the past to be part of the garden. War should stay out of here. Shaking windows, wailing women, burnt skin, the terrifying gleam in the whites of a young man’s eyes. Blood that was not menstrual, softness that was damaged flesh, stillness that was not sleep but death. She wished she could wash her mind of all these things. She breathed in the smell of the garden, touched the flowers. This was the present, and she was here inside it. (Page 68)

Roman history is constantly being written around, it has always been done; In a sense, we know more about our ancient Romans than they themselves knew. In other words, Roman history is a work in progress.

As if reading his mind, Jamal-al-Din said, 'To get what you love, you must first be patient with what you hate." (p61)

This is a dangerous myth if we think we are better historians than our predecessors.

My father was a walking encyclopedia, and he flipped his pages with the zeal and precision of a magician.

Is honesty an achievement? Personality is one thing, achievement is another thing. So what has your father achieved? How much money is he leaving for you when he dies? Or is it his textbooks that you’ll collect and pass on to your own children?

But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.

The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father’s house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I’d had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I’d never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life.

They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man.

A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp.