Jerusalem is so permeated with layers and textures, minglings of all kinds that, once you've lived there you don't get over it. - Naomi Shihab Nye

(And if you could choose something to carry you through, say, the next forty or so years, what would that be?) It's already been given to me. Listening and passing it on! I'm not one of those people who walks around all the time trying to feel worthy of all my life's gifts, although I know people like that and respect them. They're always asking Do I deserve this life I've been given?—I just don't think in those terms. Pass on something good and you'll deserve it. You don't have to be perfect. When I was turning forty, a few years ago, I thought a lot about energy. That was the issue, not age. Not all the dumb things that people want to focus on. To have a kind of vital sense of voice and story, life and word, the essential ongoing energy-I hope to keep inviting it in and not to be one of those people who goes to parties and talks about all the writing grants you've never gotten. Not to turn into one of those petulant, whiny writers. To maintain an energy and openness to what comes my way. That would be what I would hope for.

Salma Khadra al-Jayusi has been instrumental in her role as a transmitter of Arabic literature.

I keep feeling so much gratitude for what we are given in our lives. All of us, by way of accident, by way of things we couldn't have selected ourselves. The worlds we are born into, the people we are related to, the landscapes we learn to love wherever we are.