But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.
I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.
Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame.
Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.
I reluctantly concluded that there was no way for me to help bring into being the Muslim culture I'd dreamed of, the progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture which is what I've always understood as freedom. . . . Actually Existing Islam. . . which makes literalism a weapon and redescription a crime, will never let the likes of me in.
It's amazing to impact people's lives - it's a cool thing to have the spotlight and be able to reassure people, to say, "It's OK to be you. "
The risk for a woman who considers her helpless children her "job" is that the children's growth toward self-sufficiency may be experienced as a refutation of the mother's indispensability, and she may unconsciously sabotage their growth as a result.
I fell from the sky. I'm a parachutist, and I missed my mark.
The outward manifestations of an inner combustion are never very directed.