Home > Author > Monica Ali
1 " 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 , Brick Lane
2 " The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful "
3 " They were both lost in cities that would not pause even to shrug "
4 " 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. "
5 " If you think you are powerless, then you are "
6 " 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 numb her thoughts, he argued loud; while she wanted to look neither to the past nor to the future, he lived exclusively in both. They took different paths but they had journeyed, so she realized, together. "
7 " 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. "
8 " Spreading rumours is our national past time "
9 " 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 "
10 " 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. "
11 " 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 "
12 " 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. "
13 " 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). "
14 " 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. "
15 " 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 , Untold Story
16 " Life made its pattern around and beneath and through her. "
17 " 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. "
18 " 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. "
19 " Tevis being childless meant you felt a little sorry for her, and a bit jealous. Probably the same way she felt about you. "
20 " If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men (page 80). "
