Ahdaf Soueif Quotes

• But things move on and by the time you've plotted your position the world around you has changed and you are running -panting- to catch up.

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Running, Moving, World

  46 Copy quote

• And Egypt ? What is Egypt strenght?her resilience ?her ability to absorb poeple and events into the pores of her being? is that true or is it just a consolation ? a shifting of responsibility? and if it is true , how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt ?

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Responsibility, Egypt, Strenght

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “The Map of Love”, p.326, Bloomsbury Publishing

  48 Copy quote

• She had been wrong to think it wouldn't matter that much to him, yes,He took her for granted, of course he did , but he took her for granted - not like an old coat in the corner of a dark cupboard, as she'd put it to herself , but like the very air that he breathed .

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Dark, Thinking, Air

  49 Copy quote

• Sometimes,because we use the same words,we assume we mean the same thing

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Mean, Use, Assuming

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “The Map of Love”, p.182, Bloomsbury Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved — turned this way and that, examined, considered.

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Passion, Voice, Shining

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “The Map of Love”, p.95, Bloomsbury Publishing

  19 Copy quote

• I now find myself looking at every sentence, every image, that purports to tell the West about the Arabs and the Muslims with this question in mind: to what extent does it feed into existing stereotypes and established prejudice?

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Mind, Doe, Prejudice

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground”, p.278, A&C Black

  9 Copy quote

• If people can write to each other across space, why can they not write across time too?

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Writing, Space, People

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “The Map of Love”, p.324, Bloomsbury Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• Tell me, if you thought a man had a tendresse for you, but he wasn't doing anything about it. And you wanted to hurry him up a little so you made a move, an unmistakable move; one that nobody could pretend had been a misunderstanding. And he - he ignored it - ignored you. What would you feel?

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Moving, Men, Littles

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “I Think of You”, p.124, Bloomsbury Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• From 1949 to the present, for every dollar the US spent on an African, it spent $250.65 on an Israeli, and for every dollar it spent on someone from the Western Hemisphere outside the US, it spent $214 on an Israeli.

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Atheism, Dollars, Hemisphere

  8 Copy quote

• Egypt.mother of civilization, dreaming herself through the centuries. Dreaming us all, her children: those who stay and work for her and complain of her, and those who leave and yearn for her and blame her with bitterness for driving them away.

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Mother, Dream, Children

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “The Map of Love”, p.59, Bloomsbury Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• So at the heart of all things is the germ of their overthrow; the closer you are to the heart, the closer to the reversal. Nowhere to go but down. You reach the core and then you're blown away--

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Heart, Nowhere To Go, Germs

  Ahdaf Soueif (2012). “The Map of Love”, p.46, Bloomsbury Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• I haven't come to you only to take , I haven't come to you empty handed : I bring you poetry as great as yours but in anther tongue , I bring you black eyes and golden skin and curly hair , I bring you Islam and Luxor and Alexandria and Lutes and tambourines and date-palms and silk rugs and sunshine and incense and voluptuous ways

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Eye, Sunshine, Hair

  Ahdaf Soueif (1999). “In the Eye of the Sun”, p.512, A&C Black

  10 Copy quote

• That narrow stretch of sand knows nothing in the world better than it does the white waves that whip it , caress it , collapse on to it . The white foam knows nothing better than those sands which wait for it , rise to it and suck it in .but what do the waves know of the massed, hot, still sands of the desert just twenty , no , ten feet beyond the scalloped edge ? And what does the beach knows of depths, the cold, the currents just there, where-do you see it? - Where the water turns a deeper blue.

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Beach, Blue, White

  6 Copy quote

• You know, I've been thinking: all the women in the books you like -- Sartre and Camus and all that -- they don't really exist. Not as people. They're only there to wait for the men. To love them and be loved back or not -- mostly not; to be beaten up or killed; to appear as a face on the wall of Meurseault's cell--

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Wall, Book, Men

  7 Copy quote

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