I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies.

If you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all.

Whether the author intended a symbolic resonance to exist in her book is irrelevant. All that matters is whether it's there. Because the book does not exist for the benefit of the author, the book exists for the benefit of YOU. If we as readers can have a bigger and richer experience with the world as a result of reading a symbol and that symbol wasn't intended by the author, WE STILL WIN.

I figured something out," he said aloud. "The future is unpredictable." Hassan said, "Sometimes the kafir likes to say massively obvious things in a really profound voice.

My days had a pleasant identicalness about them. I had always liked that: I liked routine. I liked being bored. I didn’t want to but I did.

But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.

Great news for someone is always bad news for someone else