From Mama we learned what sort of people we should be, and we loved her as a confidante; but Papa's image was the mold of our dreams. (p52) - Dorit Rabinyan

We are drugged with romantic novels and Turkish films and sayings like, 'Everything will be better when you're married', and we rush panic-stricken towards the wedding-canopy, out of hunger, almost as though it were a children's disease we cannot recover from until we take the marriage vow. We leave the 'We' of the family and move directly to the 'Us' of the couple, without any 'Me' in the middle. I think that on the way from 'We' to 'Us' there has to be a 'Me', otherwise you have no energy for living.

The silence was very intense, like the hush that used to trouble her mind when she was the first to wake up on Saturday mornings. (p97)

The problem with Palestinian literature in Israel is that so few of us know anything about it. ("Did you ever read any Palestinian literature in the course of your schooling?") No, they thought it would be more useful for us to read James Joyce than the literature of our neighbors. I think it is in fact an Israeli policy not to translate Arabic literature. There is a hostile attitude that is being transferred from one generation to the next. The truth is that we do not have insight into their personal and cultural life. We have nothing that can be used to bridge the gap. Literature could, of course, be such a bridge, because it helps you to see that other people are human just like us.