Kamila Shamsie

What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.

To be a father in this family was to be a god, a hero, the bestower of gifts. It was to be a tyrant, a despot, a monster.

What is loyalty? To whom do we owe it? And at what cost?

The truth has a way of inserting itself into people's lives.

How sweet to be misled into feeling secure, how difficult, once the mystery was dispelled, to accept the truth of one's vulnerability.

Because you don't let people decide who you are. You decide for yourself.

Fear could be delegated. Thoughts of home, of friends, of love, of a life full of promise and pleasure, could be so powerful that even years later they could stop a person in the street, suck the breath from the chest, loosen the knees, and bring one to the ground.

People predictably gravitated to something tangible, something they could touch, that would remind them of the person they had lost.

To never be touched was to be frozen for life.

The mind, of course, is elastic, fluid. It acclimates, to an astonishing degree, to circumstances. Even the most appalling conditions, if repeated endlessly, if suffered indefinitely, become bearable.

Distance was a dangerous thing. Distance made myopic the eye, it rendered objects invisible on the other side.

Mother and father were at best poor life coaches and at worst, lazy cowards. We showed Aneeka and Parvaiz something different.