“The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!”

“Anyone can grow into something beautiful.”

“May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.”

“He saw things in a way that others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face.”

“But whichever form it took it brought with it, in those moments of bitter anguish, such a desperate surge of hope that it was almost untouchable, and flitted away like a golden butterfly into the bright blue sky - beautiful, unreachable and completely transistent.”

“We come from the land, give our love and labor to her, and she nurtures us in return. When we die, we return to the land. In a way, she owns us. Palestine owns us and we belong to her”

“You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think--I did--that God put you on earth to blow your father away.”

“I love you, I whispered to myself. I’m here for you. Reassurance of self-love was all I had.”