The power of the Arab reactionaries increases day by day, thanks to the flood of wealth in the arid sands...Arab progressivism is still a child, lack… - Fadwa Tuqan

Spring, the breath of youth, sends a driving force through my whole being. I have just returned from a walk. The moon was full, the air laden with a unique fragrance from jasmine, damask roses and al-naseem flowers from the gardens of the surrounding houses. (p184)

silence has its own aesthetic genius that bespeaks a thousand thoughts and emotions. (p181)

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.