top of page

"You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you just have to see and feel."
Standard
Customized
More


"It would be an existence rife with difficulties... but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heirloom."
Life


"I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again."
Self


"Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors."
Family


"He used to wonder how such a frail little body could house so much joy, so much goodness. It couldn't. It spilled out of her, came pouring out her eyes."
Emotion


"A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché."
Art


"She remembered all too well how time had dragged without him, how she had shuffled about feeling waylaid, out of balance. How she could ever cope with his permanent absence?"
Reflection


"They rarely look at Baba -- the teenagers -- and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him."
Life


"Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency was but one."
Family


"That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms."
Literature


"I'm all you have in this world Mariam, and when I'm gone you'll have nothing. You ARE nothing!"
Emotion
More

"You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Reading is an activity of civilized beings."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Whate'er I read to her. I'll plead for youAs for my patron, stand you so assured,As firmly as yourself were in still place - Yea, and perhaps with more successful wordsThan you, unless you were a scholar, sir.O this learning, what a thing it is!"
Author Name
Personal Development

"Don't be ashamed of your ignorance, be ashamed of your unwillingness to overcome it."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Dare to read."
Author Name
Personal Development

"The greatest treasures are books."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Do not be ready to listen to anyone who is ready to show you your past mistakes instead, be ready to listen to someone who is ready to show you the untold lessons from your past mistakes so that you may be able to skip your future mistakes."
Author Name
Personal Development

"We do not need to teach our children how to fight. We need to teach our children the miraculousness and transientness of life."
Author Name
Personal Development

"We seldom learn much from someone with whom we agree."
Author Name
Personal Development

"This corn will teach to you, should you peel away the husk, and be willing to open your ears."
Author Name
Personal Development
bottom of page