Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Leila Aboulela
64 quotes
“'He took my strength instead of my virtue...That's what happened. He dug inside and took my muscles.' (p246)”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'In every journey...there comes a point, around three quarters of the way through, when the traveller, without a guide, can go no further. But not everyone finds a guide. Not everyone accepts a guide. Not everyone is convinced. Many would rather keep fumbling on their own, trying and trying again. They would rather risk not completing the journey, they would rather risk getting lost or content themselves with the advance already made, than follow in trust.' (p259)”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my fiction, I am looking for a place of compassion, a place in which the traveler can share the baggage they carried with them, a place to hum the yearning for home as well as push forward and claim a position in this new world, which might not be welcoming at first, but, hopefully, there are spots that can give way to the pressure of a stranger rather than resist. Because the immigrant experience is also often one of blunder and misunderstandings, I am also looking for a forgiving place where people can be given a second chance.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fiction is fueled by love and anger—my love for my father and his own love for his family and country fueled Lyrics Alley.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Eurocentric literature is also Christian-centric no matter how much writers and readers regard it as secular or humanist. Every genre from crime to science fiction is heavy with Christian symbolism, while secular literary fiction, even if it is in opposition to Christianity, is also still engaged with its ethos. I write from a Muslim perspective, from within Islamic tradition. Not all my characters are practicing Muslims; many as you say are cultural Muslims, and I don’t find it difficult to write about them because they are people I know and am in contact with.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The role of art should be to bear witness to the truth no matter how complex or disturbing or dangerous.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do sometimes think of my books as food that I am serving to readers. A dish full of flavor with a moody texture and the chance shock of pepper. My characters are flawed rather than “good,” and so different readers respond to them in different ways—sometimes with impatience and sometimes with empathy. Either way I hope that readers feel a mild jolt of consciousness.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When it’s fair trade, it’s blessed, and when it’s unfair it’s an injustice. That is the way of the world. Everyone wants something and they barter to get it.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish I could say she looked like her old self. Suffice to say she looked well. None of us look like our old selves. War is not kind to a woman’s beauty.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Keep your faith within your heart even if your tongue is forced to say otherwise.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Free, heart tight, expectant, in love, she was not sure what her position would be in the household, not sure about much except that she did not want to be anywhere else”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Twenty years ago, when I was recently married and a graduate student at the London School of Economics, I, too, started to wear the hijab. I took this step with no pressure from my parents or my husband. It came after years of hesitation, years during which I held back out of fear that I would look ugly in a head scarf and that my progressive friends would make fun of me. But I had so often gazed with longing at the girls at university who covered their hair, and I wanted to be like them. To me they seemed romantic, feminine, wrapped in some kind of mystique. I liked the look, but it was more than that. I was persuaded by the religious argument for the veil, which stresses modesty. I wanted to take a step in the right direction.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sank into the armchair, into myself and I took your story understanding every reference, getting every joke. I hummed the tunes of songs you mentioned, I saw maps of the streets you pointed out. I was your perfect reader and I was too rapt to even stop and think that I don't want this to end. This was the first time I recognized myself in fiction. Not my inner self, I was able to do that between the most unlikely covers, novels written by men from other centuries or set in places I didn't even know existed. But in your work I saw my country, my values and the social circles I grew up in. ("Pages of Fruit")”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my mid-twenties, I moved from Sudan to Scotland. The trauma of that move was the catalyst that launched my journey as a writer. It was as if the person I always thought I would be (a university statistics professor like my mother, a privileged member of Khartoum society) died and a new person was born—someone who was marginalized due to race and religion, a writer without a creative writing degree. I was homesick and could not stop comparing my new home with the old one. These thoughts and emotions couldn’t find any outlet except that of fiction. I felt compelled to write. If you had asked me then if writing was “something I enjoyed and wanted to pursue,” I would have found this wording alien. I was never attracted to the idea of being a writer. My early writing caused me disturbance rather than enjoyment. I was like someone possessed.”
Leila Aboulela (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source