859d657
|
The thing about getting older is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need things to be certain.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
01b3908
|
Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Everyday of my life I have prepared for success, worked for it, waited for it, and you don't notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime is finished. Then it hits you--the thing you have been waiting for has already gone by. And it was going in the other direction. It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full." p. 265"
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
282ffab
|
Apa yang tidak kuketahui-saat masih muda dulu-ada dua jenis cinta. Jenis yang bermula begitu dahsyatnya dan pelan-pelan menghilang, yang terasa seperti tak akan pernah habis lalu suatu hari tahu-tahu ludes. Lalu ada jenis yang tadinya tidak disadari, tetapi terus tumbuh sedikit demi sedikit setiap harinya, seperti kerang yang menghasilkan mutiara, bulir demi bulir, sebuah permata dari pasir.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
02383b6
|
She touched his hand for the last time. "Oh, Karim, that we have already done. But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn't me, and you weren't you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn't see things. What we did--we made each other up." p. 382"
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
f512299
|
If you think you are powerless, then you are
|
|
power-of-words
self-worth
|
Monica Ali |
d0ae3de
|
It's a success story," said Chanu, exercising his shoulders. "But behind every story of immigration success there lies a deeper tragedy." Kindly explain this tragedy." I'm talking about the clash between Western values and our own. I'm talking about the struggle to assimilate and the need to preserve one's identity and heritage. I'm talking about children who don't know what their identity is. I'm talking about the feelings of alienation en..
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
24bb122
|
what I did not know - I was a young man - is that there are two kinds of love. The kind that starts off big and slowly wears away, that seems you can never use it up and then one day is finished. And the kind that you don't notice at first, but which adds a little bit to itself every day, like an oyster makes a pearl, grain by grain, a jewel from the sand.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
4c07938
|
You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth between your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved (page 87).
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
79ec8cd
|
And so they entwined their lives to drink from the pools of each other's sadness. From these special watering holes, each man drew strength.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
1d9d350
|
The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful
|
|
pain
relationships
writing
reality
family-contact
|
Monica Ali |
0444bb0
|
I don't know which is more nutty. All this stuff I do outside of work, or the stuff I do all week.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
efb6a24
|
They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug
|
|
foreign
immigration
society
london
lost
|
Monica Ali |
02adb25
|
Life made its pattern around and beneath and through her.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
1c12944
|
The boys wore jeans, or tracksuits with big ticks on them as if their clothing had been marked by a teacher who valued, above all else, conformity.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
2e96bcb
|
I can't stay," said Chanu, and they clung to each other inside a sadness that went beyond words and tears, beyond that place, those causes and consequences, and became a part of their breath, their marrow, to travel with them from now to wherever they went."
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
6698cd6
|
Tevis being childless meant you felt a little sorry for her, and a bit jealous. Probably the same way she felt about you.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
c7e7c32
|
If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men (page 80).
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
0f62d47
|
She had another English word. She carried it all the way down the corridor.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
811401d
|
Kadang keadaan ternyata tidak seburuk yang disangka. Kadang-kadang hal buruk yang disangka akan datang malah tidak datang sama sekali. Kalian hanya harus menunggu dan melihat keadaan.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
466cdc5
|
In the only way that pain can be truly remembered, through a new pain.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
9e62bae
|
He would not come again. This was good. No. This was bad. At least it was an end.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
eb44952
|
An hour and forty-five minutes before Nazneen's life began-began as it would proceed for quite some time, that is to say uncertainly-her mother, Rupban, felt an iron fist squeeze her belly.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
a4a86a6
|
Spreading rumours is our national past time
|
|
past-time
waste-of-time
|
Monica Ali |
71b98ee
|
while she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.
|
|
present
future
past
life
thoughts-on-life
thought-provoking
|
Monica Ali |
1b540f9
|
In the rainy season, back home, when the land had given way to water and the buffaloes grew webbed feet, when the hens took to the roofs, when marooned goats teetered on minuscule islands, when the women splashed across on the raised walkway to the cooking hut and found they could no longer kindle a dung-and-husk fire and looked to their reserves, when the rain rang louder than cow bells, rice was the means, the giver of life.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
d039b8a
|
All the while, when Nazneen turned to her prayers and tried to empty her mind and accept each new thing with grace or indifference, Chanu worked his own method. He was looking for the same essential thing. But he thought he could grab it from the outside and hold it against his chest like a shield... Where Nazneen turned in, he turned out; where she strove to accept, he was determined to struggle; where she attempted to dull her mind and nu..
|
|
truth
|
Monica Ali |
87d67e9
|
Gabe, did you pray?' 'Sort of.' 'Me too. Do you believe?' 'No. Do you?' 'No.' 'I don't believe,' said Gabriel, 'But I have faith, if you know what I mean.' 'What in?' 'I don't know, life, carrying on, I suppose.' 'Yes.
|
|
faith
god
life
in-the-kitchen
monica-ali
|
Monica Ali |
3599ff7
|
A pair of schoolchildren,pale as rice and loud as peacocks,cut over the road and hurtled down a side street,galloping with joy or else with terror (p. 55).
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
093bac3
|
Suddenly, she was gripped by the idea that if she changed her clothes her entire life would change as well.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
ef239bc
|
Sinking, sinking, drinking water. When everyone in the village was fasting a long month,when not a grain, not a drop of water passed between the parched lips of any able-bodied man, woman or child over the age of ten, when the sun was hotter than the cooking pot and dusk was just a febrile wish, the hypocrite went down to the pond to duck his head, to dive and sink, to drink and sink a little lower. p. 105
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
23c3e5c
|
The air was hot and wet, as if it had absorbed the sweat of countless bodies. It dripped also with scandal.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
af441f7
|
A man cannot live without water. He cannot live without it, but he can bear the thought of no water. A man can live without sex. He can live without it, but he cannot bear the thought of no sex.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
144a5b7
|
We open a book, we turn a newspaper page, we allow the television and the radio to come into our homes. All the things we are told every day - are the true?
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
8d0fa78
|
In the rainy season, back home, when the land had given way to water and the buffaloes grew webbed feet, when the hens took to the roofs, when marooned goats teetered on minuscule islands, when the women splashed across on the raised walkway to the cooking hut and found they could no longer kindle a dung-and-husk fire and looked to their reserves, when the rain rang louder than cow bells,
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
a12d226
|
And the city itself was just a glow on the dark earth...
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
9cd6295
|
When you have fallen low, she told herself, what hurts is pretending you are high.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
66aa9d0
|
Nishi's sister, who was sixteen years old, had gone for a "holiday" in Sylhet and returned six months later with a husband and a swelling belly. Nishi, strong on forward-planning skills, was taking evasive action: she was going on a holiday of her own and she would return when she was twenty-five. At that ancient age the danger of marriage was over."
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
912fb8b
|
I don't look down on them, but what can you do? If a man has only ever driven a rickshaw and never in his life held a book in his hand, then what can you expect from him?
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
c621526
|
All books are investments (p.134)
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
7aaeea8
|
He still smelled of limes. It made saliva come into her mouth. It made her feel that before she had been sleepy, and now she was awake.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
04df32e
|
She put her free hand briefly across his round cheek. To touch like this was permitted here, among these stateless people, where the rules were unknown and in any case suspended.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
62fbee0
|
The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful. However much she thought of to tell, however the words flowed in her head as she performed her chores, despite the emotion that swelled and throbbed while the storylines formed, the telling was inevitably brief and blunt, a poor thing, stunted as a failed crop.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
e58a0a7
|
Sometime when people see a beautiful thing they want to destroy it. The thing make them feel ugly so they act ugly.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |
3bf5dc1
|
What could not be changed must be borne. And since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne.
|
|
|
Monica Ali |