Crescent
Diana Abu-Jaber
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground”
“...tasting a piece of bread that someone bought is like looking at that person, but tasting a piece of bread that they baked is like looking out of their eyes.”
“People look at you and forget about things.”
“The loneliness of the arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother's lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day. That is the way Sirine suspects that Arabs feel everything - larger than life, feelings walking in the sky.”
“Here is something you have to understand about stories: They point you in the right direction but they can't take you all the way there. Stories are crescent moons; they glimmer in the night sky, but they are most exquisite in their incomplete state. Because people crave the beauty of not-knowing, the excitement of suggestion, and the sweet tragedy of mystery.”
“Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [...] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes.”
“His expression seems a sort of surrender: the loss of a thing that he has already lost before.”
“Tomorrow is the start of Ramadan, a month of daily fasting, broken by an iftar, a special meal after sunset and a bite before sunrise. Han has told her that the idea behind the fast of Ramadan is to remind everyone of the poor and less fortunate, a time of charity, compassion, abstinence, and forgiveness. And even though Um-Nadia claims to have no religion and many of their customers are Christians, they all like to eat the traditional foods prepared throughout the Middle East to celebrate the nightly fast-breaking during Ramadan. There are dishes like sweet qatayif crepes and cookies and creamy drinks and thick apricot nectar.”
“..cold, like swallowed tears.”
“You want to protect you children, don't you? You let them out of your body but you never let them all the way out.”
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Book Keywords:
refugees, love, arab, beauty, ramadan, fasting, point-of-view, traditional, poetry, expats
