And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination, like the color of the flower at first bloom on a wet morning.

Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability. And very often expressed in curves.

Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.

A sudden gust: How big the world seems in a wind.

History is a wave that moves through time slightly faster than we do.

It is easy to live multiple lives! What is hard is to be a whole person

The Quran says nothing about the veil, except for an injunction to veil the bosom, which is obvious. As for the face, Muhammad's wife Khadijeh never wore the veil, nor did the other wives of the Prophet after Khadijeh died. [...] The ulema have twisted the Quran with their hadith, always twisting it toward those in power, until the message Muhammad laid out so clearly, straight from God, has been reversed, and good Muslim women are made like slaves again, or worse.