the map of love - adhaf soueif
p.151
"I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and who does not share my concerns...We are livig in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job - in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom i can run, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me i'm in the wrong, strengthening when she tells me i'm in the right. I want to love and be loved back - but what i see is not love or companionship but a sort of transaction of convenience santionec by religion and society and I do not want it."
p.153
"It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a previous gen from its latyers of the softest tissue and laid in front of the beloved-turned this way andthat, examined, considered. And so they sit, and touch, and talk and brethe and so they string their moments into a glorious chain, and throw it round each other's necks, garland each other with it. invisible to all others, it shines for them, a beacon across a crowded room, across an ocean, across time."
p.249
"I am in love with you. There. It is said. For many, many years I have believed it was my fate never to say tehse words. A long time ago I had hoped, as all young men hope - no, I had more than hoped, I had confidently expected to be overtaken by those feelings I had read so much about. It never happened. And now it has...;it is you. You yourself, Anna, with your violet eyes, your slender wrists,your way of sitting absolutely still and listening and watching with your head held high, your frank look, your fearless questioning, the notes of your voice, the grace of your movement....
And there is this hushed moment, not quite understanding, not quite believing, the hurried glance through the paper once again, the wave of joy so powerful it shakes the heart like grief...."
p.299
"but your mind is occupied with someone"
"before she can think, says, 'yes.' And then to her own surprise she says, 'but i don't know his feelings.'"
"his feelings? Umm Aya draws in a breath. 'What can his feelings be? Can someone be desired by the moon and say no?"
p.386
"and his heart was full when she came to him in his bed as though this was how she always wanted to spend her nights"
p.499
"The one woman in all the world who was meant for him-and God had sent her to him....She was his sea to swim in, his desert to gallop in, his fields to plough."
"I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and who does not share my concerns...We are livig in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job - in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom i can run, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me i'm in the wrong, strengthening when she tells me i'm in the right. I want to love and be loved back - but what i see is not love or companionship but a sort of transaction of convenience santionec by religion and society and I do not want it."
p.153
"It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a previous gen from its latyers of the softest tissue and laid in front of the beloved-turned this way andthat, examined, considered. And so they sit, and touch, and talk and brethe and so they string their moments into a glorious chain, and throw it round each other's necks, garland each other with it. invisible to all others, it shines for them, a beacon across a crowded room, across an ocean, across time."
p.249
"I am in love with you. There. It is said. For many, many years I have believed it was my fate never to say tehse words. A long time ago I had hoped, as all young men hope - no, I had more than hoped, I had confidently expected to be overtaken by those feelings I had read so much about. It never happened. And now it has...;it is you. You yourself, Anna, with your violet eyes, your slender wrists,your way of sitting absolutely still and listening and watching with your head held high, your frank look, your fearless questioning, the notes of your voice, the grace of your movement....
And there is this hushed moment, not quite understanding, not quite believing, the hurried glance through the paper once again, the wave of joy so powerful it shakes the heart like grief...."
p.299
"but your mind is occupied with someone"
"before she can think, says, 'yes.' And then to her own surprise she says, 'but i don't know his feelings.'"
"his feelings? Umm Aya draws in a breath. 'What can his feelings be? Can someone be desired by the moon and say no?"
p.386
"and his heart was full when she came to him in his bed as though this was how she always wanted to spend her nights"
p.499
"The one woman in all the world who was meant for him-and God had sent her to him....She was his sea to swim in, his desert to gallop in, his fields to plough."