Herring Quotes (page 152)
If you are for Allah, I am for Al-Lat. And she doesn't believe your God when he recognizes her. Her opposition to him is implacable, irrevocable, engulfing. The war between us cannot end in truce. And what a truce! Yours is a patronizing, condescending lord. Al-Lat hasn't the slightest wish to be Allah's daughter. She is his equal, as I am yours.
Salman Rushdie
They were all there (at the airport) - the deaf ammoomas, the cantankerous, arthritic appoopas, the pining wives, scheming uncles, children with the runs. The fiances to be reassessed. The teacher's husband still waiting for his Saudi visa. The teacher's husband's sisters waiting for their dowries. The wire-bender's pregnant wife. "Mostly sweeper class," Baby Kochamma said grimly, and looked away while a mother, no wanting to give up her good place near the railing, aimed her distracted...
Arundhati Roy
Oh, yes, she's unusual!' he said bitterly. 'She blurts our whatever may come into her head; she tumbles from one outrageous escapade into another; she's happier gromming horses and hobnobbing with stable-hands than going to parties; she's impertinent; you daren't catch her eye for fear she should start to giggle; she hasn't any accomplishments; I never saw anyone with less diginity; she's abominable, and damnably hot at hand, frank to a fault, and-a darling!
Georgette Heyer
I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives. Take you and your sister, for example. You're born to the same parents, you grow up in the same household, you're both girls. How do you end up with such wildly different personalities?...One puts on a bikini like little semaphore flags and lies by the pool looking sexy, and the other puts on her school bathing suit and swims her heart out like a dolphin...
Haruki Murakami
As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.
Haruki Murakami
Why must you have this map?" she asks. "Even with a map, you will never leave this Town."She brushes away the bread crumbs that have fallen on her lap and looks toward the Pool."Do you want to leave here?" she asks again. I shake my head. Do I mean this as a "no", or is it only that I do not know?"I just want to find out about the Town," I say. "The lay of the land, the history, the people, ... I want to know who made the rules, what has sway over us. I want even to know what lies beyond."She...
Haruki Murakami
Standing safely on the opposite bank with her dry maid, her dry escort, and a company of streaming horsemen, Philippa said scathingly, ‘That’s men for you. Cover the lady’s retreat, the book says. A hundred years ago, maybe. And what stopped you from coming with me just now? I can swim, you know.
Dorothy Dunnett
Then she was in the air, and Carlyle involuntarily held his breath. He had not realized that the dive was nearly forty feet. It seemed an eternity before he heard the swift compact sound as she reached the sea. And it was with his glad sigh of relief when her light watery laughter curled up the side of the cliff and into his anxious ears that he knew he loved her.
F. Scott Fitzgerald