A seed does not see the light without first cleaving a difficult path through the earth. This story of mine is the story of the seed's battle against… - Fadwa Tuqan

Annihilation is, indeed, part of our being, but art is immortal. A sense of the tyranny of annihilation and the ephemeral quality of life always prompts the artist to create something more permanent then the self. (p188)

psychological problems are not confined to women. Men are afflicted with them too. If a man grows up in unnatural circumstances, or if his childhood is harsh, problems will continue to govern his conduct and attitudes all his life, and his case will be exactly the same as that of a woman." (p179)

The iron mould the family cast us in and would not allow us to break, the time-worn rules difficult to overturn, the mindless traditions imprisoning the girl in a life of trivialities...I yearned continually to escape from my time and place. The time was an age of subjection, repression and dissolution into nothingness; the place was the prison of the house.
Some come into this world to find the way smoothly paved before them; others arrive to find it thorny and rough.
Fate threw me on to a rough path and on it I began my journey up the mountain.
I carried the rock and endured the fatigue of the endless ascents and descents.
Great expectations and soaring dreams are not enough; even sheer will-power is not sufficient.
I realised that action is the obverse of the coin, the reverse being dream and will-power. I determined to do business with this two-sided coin: will and action.