1
" Ibn Rushd caressing her body had often praised its beauty to the point at which she grew irritated and said, You do not think my thoughts worth praising, then. He replied that the mind and body were one, the mind was the form of the human body, and as such was responsible for all the actions of the body, one of which was thought. To praise the body was to praise the mind that ruled it. Aristotle had said this and he agreed, and because of this it was hard for him, he whispered blasphemously in her ear, to believe that consciousness survived the body, for the mind was of the body and had no meaning without it. She did not want to argue with Aristotle and said nothing. Plato was different, he conceded. Plato thought the mind was trapped in the body like a bird and only when it could shed that cage would it soar and be free. "
― Salman Rushdie , Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
8
" Maybe in the case of true human, their mind, their soul, their consciousness flows through their bodies like blood, inhabiting every cell of their physical being, and so Aristotle was right, in humans the mind and body are one and cannot be separated, the self is both with the body and perishes with it too. She imagined that union with a thrill. How lucky human beings were if that was the case, she wanted to tell Geronimo who was and was not Ibn Rushd: lucky and doomed. When their hearts pounded with excitement their souls pounded too, when their pulses raced their spirits were aroused, hen their eyes moistened with tears of happiness it was their minds that felt the joy. Their minds touched the people their fingers touched, and when they in turn were touched by others it was as if two consciousnesses were briefly joined. The mind gave the body sensuality, it allowed the body to taste delight and to smell love in their lover's sweet perfume; not only their bodies but their minds, too, made love. And at the end the soul, as mortal as the body, learned the last great lesson of life, which was the body's death. "
― Salman Rushdie , Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
9
" She wanted to say, I am made of smoke. My mind is smoke, my thoughts are smoke, I am all smoke and only smoke. This body is a garment I put on, which by my magic art I have made capable of functioning as a human body functions, it's so biologically perfect that it can conceive children and pop them out in threes, fours and fives. Yet I am not of this body and could, if I chose, inhabit another woman, or an antelope, or a gnat. Aristotle was wrong, for I have lived for aeons, and altered by body when I chose, like a garment of which I had grown tired. The mind and the body are two, she wanted to say, but she knew it would disappoint him to be disagreed with, so she held her tongue. "
― Salman Rushdie , Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
12
" We were all trapped in stories, she said, just as he used to say, his wavy hair, his naughty smile, his beautiful mind, each of us the prisoner of our own solipsistic narrative, each family the captive of the family story, each community locked within its own tale of itself, each people the victims of their own versions of history, and there were parts of the world where the narratives collided and went to war, where there were two or more incompatible stories fighting for space on, to speak, the same page. "
― Salman Rushdie , Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
14
" At the beginning of all love there is a private treaty each of the lovers make with himself or herself, an agreement to set aside what is wrong with the other for the sake of what is right. Love is spring after winter. It comes to heal life's wounds, inflicted by the unloving cold. When that warmth is born in the heart the imperfections of the beloved are as nothing, less than nothing, and the secret treaty with oneself is easy to sign. The voice of doubt is stilled. Later, when love fades, the secret treaty looks like folly, but if so, it's a necessary folly, born of lovers' belief in beauty, which is to say, in the possibility of the impossible thing, true love. "
― Salman Rushdie , Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
16
" let me belong again to that faraway place I left so long ago, from which I am alienated, and which has forgotten me, in which I am an alien now even though it was the place where I began, let me belong again, walk those streets knowing they are mine, knowing that my story is a part of those streets, even though it isn't, it hasn't been for most of a lifetime, let it be so, let it be so "
― Salman Rushdie , Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
