Osman Quotes

In life you have to learn to count the good days. You have to tuck them in your pocket and carry them around with you. So I’m putting today in my pocket and I’m off to bed.

You can have too much choice in this world. And when everyone has too much choice, it is also much harder to get chosen. And we all want to be chosen.

For I am I: ergo, the truth of myself; my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortex—asymmetric to all rhythms, oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and white: mine own unison in duality.

And if one is never lost in life, then clearly one has never traveled anywhere interesting.

After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever takes your fancy. No one tells you off, except for your doctors and your children.

You always know when it’s your first time, don’t you? But you rarely know when it’s your final time.

It was a well-known fact that there were no calories in homemade cakes.

People without a sense of humor will never forgive you for being funny.

More women are murdering people these days,” says Joyce. “If you ignore the context, it is a real sign of progress.

The more Chaotic I am, the more complete I am.

And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things.

It’s great to be the fastest runner, but not when you’re running in the wrong direction.

Many years ago, everybody here would wake early because there was much to do and only so many hours in the day. Now they wake early because there is much to do and only so many days left.

Well, imagine if we only ever did what we were supposed to,

...There are silly, proper tears now. I'll let them fall. If you don't cry sometimes, you'll end up crying all the time.

If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.

We all have a sob story, but we don't all go around killing people.

But, however much life teaches you that nothing lasts, it is still a shock when it disappears. When the man you love with every fibre starts returning to the stars, an atom at a time.

If murder were easy, none of us would survive Christmas.

Some people love their children more than they love their partner,’ says Ibrahim, ‘and some people love their partner more than their children. And no one can ever admit to either thing.

Everyone wants to feel special, but nobody wants to feel different,

Why diet at eighty-two?” says Joyce. “What’s a sausage roll going to do to you? Kill you? Well, join the queue.

You are simply a little lost, Donna. And if one is never lost in life, then clearly one has never traveled anywhere interesting.

Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity

He’s all the things that can go wrong with men if you leave them to their own devices.

Darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. Yet you are still in great company - the Numen and your Genius with all their media, and your host of elementals and ghosts of your dead loves — are there! They need no light by which to see, no words to speak, no motive to enact except through your own purely formed desire.

Some people in life, Sue, are weather forecasters, whereas other people are the weather itself.

Donna has always been headstrong, always acted quickly and decisively. Which is a fine quality when you are right, but a liability when you are wrong. It’s great to be the fastest runner, but not when you’re running in the wrong direction.

Always look where the action isn't, because that's where the action is.

People love to sleep, and yet they are so frightened of death.

The sun is up, the skies are blue, and murder is in the air

It was a community, and in Ibrahim's opinion that was how human beings were designed to live. At Coopers Chase, anytime you wanted to be alone, you would simply close your front door, and anytime you wanted to be with people, you would open it up again. If there was a better recipe for happiness than that, then Ibrahim was yet to hear it.

Only Art is Eternal Wisdom; what is not Art soon perishes. Art is the unconscious love of all things. ‘Learning’ will cease and Reality will become known when it comes to pass that every human being is an Artist.

Everyone who dies is alive. We call people "dead" because we need a word for it, but "dead" just means that time has stopped moving forward for that person? You understand? No one dies, not really.

I'm afraid I don't know WTF. I only discovered LOL from Joyce last week

Have you ever shot anyone before?’ Rosie asks Steve, while snapping through Amy’s cable ties. ‘No,’ says Steve. ‘But the Coldplay T-shirt made it easier.

Don’t get a small dog though, Joyce,’ says Ron. ‘Small dogs are like small men: always got a point to prove. Yapping it up, barking at cars.

Thank you so much for reading The Thursday Mystery Club. Unless you haven’t read it yet and have just turned straight to the acknowledgments, which I accept is a possibility. You must live your life as you choose.

I know the difference between alone and lonely,

I know from experience that grief rides alone.

There are scars, yes, but that at least means the bleeding has stopped.

No regrets. We live our lives forwards, not backwards. So always make the best of what's in front of you.

At least I have discovered that online dating is not for me. You can have too much choice in this world. And when everyone has too much choice, it is also much harder to get chosen. And we all want to be chosen.

because you know that getting out of a garden chair at our age is a military operation. Once you are in one, you can be in it for the day.

We complain about life so endlessly and so bitterly, and yet we cling to it so dearly? Surely that makes no sense?

Faith in Qur'anic revelation unveils all the possibilities that lie before the human intellect.

Do you know how to pick loc–’ Rosie’s question is interrupted by Amy taking a large rock and smashing one of Scroggie’s back windows. ‘Ah, I see you do.

Revenge is not a straight line, it’s a circle. It’s a grenade that goes off while you’re still in the room, and you can’t help but be caught in the blast.

God cries every time someone lies to a Canadian.

We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we alongside it to keep up. Hurry, hurry, mustn't fall behind. But it doesn't, you see. Time just swirls around us. Every thing is always present. The things we've done, the people we've loved, the people we've hurt, they're all still here?

In our solitariness... great depths are sometimes sounded. Truth hideth in company.

If you have any sort of personality, someone will eventually want to kill you.

If you don’t cry sometimes, you’ll end up crying all the time.

Very few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.

I don’t know why we’re on this earth,” says Stephen. “Truly I don’t. But if I wanted to find the answer, I would begin with how much I love you.

What is it about Christmas? Everything that’s wrong seems worse, and everything that’s right seems better.

If life ever seems too complicated, if you think no one can help, sometimes the right person to turn to is an eight-year-old.

Force and rape are not an issue because he is a believing Muslim and he is an Osman Mahamud.

Of all the things to lose, to lose one's mind? Let them take a leg or a lung; let them take anything before they take that. Before you become "poor Rosemary" or "poor Frank," catching the last glimpses of the sun and seeing them for what they were. Before there were no more trips, no more games, no more Murder Clubs. Before there was no more you.

The soul is the ancestral animals. The body is their knowledge.

Islam deals not only with what man must and must not do, but also with what he needs to know. In other words, Islam is both a way of acting and doing things and a way of knowing.

You must die before your children, of course, because you have taught them to live without you. But not your dog.

It’s the people, in the end, isn’t it?” says Viktor. “It’s always the people. You can move halfway around the world to find your perfect life, move to Australia if you like, but it always comes down to the people you meet.

Day after day, mission after mission, ridding the world of evil? Waiting for the last devil to die? What a joke. New devils will always spring up, like daffodils in springtime.

You got to be careful with money. Don't let it be in charge.

People drift in and out of your life, and, when you are younger, you know you will see them again. But now every old friend is a miracle.

One by one, the lights of the village switch off. The only remaining illumination comes from behind the thick hospital blinds of Willows. The business of dying keeps different hours than the business of living.

Had she really understood then that those were the best of times? That she was in heaven? She thinks she did understand, yes. Understood she had been given a great gift. Doing the crossword in a train carriage, Stephen with a can of beer ("I will only drink beer on trains, nowhere else, don't ask me why"), glasses halfway down his nose, reading out clues. The real secret was that when they looked at each other, they each thought they had the better deal.

It was the perfect trip, and as far as Stephen was concerned, the whole weekend was one magical accident. And that's because he is the weather, and I am the weather forecaster. He believes in fate, while I am fate.

Others believe in prayer . . . . have not all yet learnt, that to ask it to be denied? Let it be the root of your Gospel. Oh, ye who are living other peoples lives! Unless desire is subconscious, it is not fulfilled, no, not in this life. Then verily sleep is better than prayer. Quiescence is hidden desire, a form of "not asking"; by it the female obtains much from man.

I would never have therapy, because who wants to unravel all that knitting? Not wroth the risk, thank you. My daughter, Joanna, has a therapist, although you'd be hard-pressed to know why if you saw the size of her house.

Mankind finds futility very hard to stomach. People find all sorts of things to give their brief lives meaning. Religion, football, astrology, social media. Valiant efforts all, but everyone knows, deep, deep down, that life is both a random occurrence and a losing battle. None of us will be remembered. These days will all be covered, in time, by the sands.

Logic, when used correctly and by an intellect that is not corrupted by the lower passions, may lead to one to the Transcendent itself.

Was he a content man, doing the things he liked alone? Or was he a lonely man making the best out of what he had? Alone, or lonely?

As he continued to talk to me, I realized one of the fundamental points about Islamism that so many people fail to understand. The way Osman was speaking wasn’t in the orthodox, religious way of the imam with a stick; he was talking about politics, about events that were happening now. That’s crucial to understanding what Islamism is all about: it isn’t a religious movement with political consequences, it is a political movement with religious consequences.

Days of death are days when we weigh our relationship with love in our bare hands. Days when we remember what has gone, and fear what is to come. The joy love brings, and the price we pay. When we give thanks but also pray for mercy.

Daughter, I want you to form the most intense, loving relationship with yourself. Only then will you realize your capacity for kindness and emotional expansiveness. Daughter, after you have formed this relationship with yourself, I want you to love others with the openness and humility that you always embodied as a child. Daughter, I want you to forgive easily, laugh loudly and never allow yourself to become the invisible, silent woman that your mother was. Daughter, this is how we soften our hearts and become better human beings.

I have been Googling, but there’s not much out there. I got so desperate I even used Bing,

We are all gone in the blink of an eye, and there is nothing to do but live while you’re waiting.

You always know when it’s your first time, don’t you? But you rarely know when it’s your final time.

I don,t just want success for my self ,I want my success to benefit others . Osman Gulum

Savaşmayı bırakan insana kim ne yapabilir ki? Yenilmek kadar büyük özgürlük yok, şimdi kazananlar düşünsün Osman.

I keep Gerry in a tight little ball just for me. I think if I let him loose here, it would overwhelm me, and I worry he might just blow away.

Ron, I didn't really know how to ask for just an instant coffee, so I got us Caramel Frappuccinos.

Good to see you, Elizabeth. Are those flowers for me?” “No, I have taken to carrying flowers around with me as an affectation,” says Elizabeth, handing them over as she is ushered in.

I am learning that it is important to stop sometimes, and just have a drink and a gossip with friends, even as corpses start to pile up around you. Which they have been doing a lot recently. It's a balancing act, of course, but, by and large, the corpses will still be there in the morning, and you mustn't let it spoil your Domino's.

You know when you look into someone's eyes for the first time and the whole world breaks apart And you just think, "Of course, of course, this is what I've been waiting for all this time"?

Steve is grateful that at least he feels loved. Because if you don’t feel loved, it’s difficult to feel anything at all.

At one point he brushed my hand and there was electricity, but I think that was the combination of the deep carpet outside the restaurant and my new cardigan.

Amy smiles. She loves Adam to the moon and back too, and decides she should tell him. Same. She is a romantic fool sometimes.

It was best to grab everything while you could. Who knows when your final swim might come, your final walk, your final kiss?

The ants are bad" The Bear "the ants?"Tahir "Do not be fooled. They look very small, so harm you don't think of then at all. Then years. Then one day you wake up, and your home has fallen down." Osman.

I’m involved about as much as I want to be with the Thursday Murder Club. If they can plant cocaine in someone’s cistern, I don’t want to think about what they’d do with my love life.

Pearson Street is just what you want a shopping street to be—busy, friendly, local, and happy. Joyce thinks it’s so perfect that it’s surely only six months away from having a Starbucks and losing what it now has.

The real secret was that when they looked at each other, they each thought they had the better deal. But, however much life teaches you that nothing lasts, it is still a shock when it disappears. When the man you love with every fiber starts returning to the stars, an atom at a time.

Other than damnation I know no magic to satisfy your wishes; for ye believe one thing, desire another, speak unlike, act differently and obtain the living value.

Whatever they say about time healing, some things in life just break and can never be fixed.

There are friendships forged in fire, which end up disappearing like smoke, and other casual, nodding friendships, which will stay with you for the rest of your life.

He had read a headline about Diet Coke once, which was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.

And, by the by, Joanna solved the mystery of my private messages. She went into my account and searched all of them for me. She told me that if I didn't want to be sent an endless tide of photographs of men's genitals, I should really change my username. Needless to say, I haven't changed it.

So every day Elizabeth opens her diary to a date two weeks ahead and writes herself a question. And every day she answers a question she set herself two weeks ago. This is her early-warning system. This is her team of scientists poring over seismology graphs. If there is going to be an earthquake, Elizabeth will be the first to know about it.

They say that time softens the pain, but that’s a fairy tale. Who would ever love again if anyone actually told the truth? I’m afraid there are some days when I could still rip out my own heart and weep myself hollow for Gerry. Some days? Every day.

The God of Imagination lived in fairytales. And the best fairytales made you fall in love. It was while flicking through "Sleeping Beauty" that I met my first love, Ivar. He was a six-year-old bello ragazzo with blond hair and eyebrows. He had bomb-blue eyes and his two front teeth were missing. The road to Happily Ever After, however, was paved with political barbed wire. Three things stood in my way. 1. The object of my affection didn't know he was the object of my affection. 2. The object of my affection preferred Action Man to Princess Aurora. 3. The object of my affection was a boy and I wasn't allowed to love a boy.

The learning of ‘How’ is the eternal ‘Why’ – unanswered! A genius is such, because he does not know how or why.

Our memories are no less real than whatever moment in which we happen to be living.

I would never have therapy, because who wants to unravel all that knitting?

Save your good luck for big things, and your bad luck for small things.

Love always finds a language.

When old friends die, you’re furious, because you’ve never quite finished what you were saying to them.

Would Ron like a team of officers rooting through his underwear?” “I don’t think anyone would like that,” says Ibrahim. “Least of all the officers.

Everyone is taking the best shot they’ve got, and some shots are just luckier than yours. Anytime you feel your unhappiness turning into bitterness, you have to check yourself. You can live with unhappiness, but bitterness will kill

The one law of Art is its own spontaneity, its pleasure and freedom. How mystic, pure and simple is its wish; it has no idea of potential divinity! Decoration is its creed and vital allegory is its belief. Being the ‘Free Morality,’ it has no sin – then most assuredly Art is all we dare express without excuse.

So what do I do now?” “You climb the next mountain, of course.” “Oh, yeah, of course,” says Donna. Simple. “And what’s up the next mountain?” “Well, we don’t know, do we? It’s your mountain. No one’s ever climbed it before.” “And what if I don’t want to? What if I just want to go home and cry every night and pretend to everyone that everything’s okay?” “Then do that. Keep being scared, keep being lonely. And spend the next twenty years coming to see me, and I will keep telling you the same thing. Put your boots on and climb the next mountain. See what’s up there. Friends, promotions, babies. It’s your mountain.” “Will there be other mountains after that one?” “There will.

The sun symbolizes the Divine intelligence; the empty vastness of space symbolizes the Divine All-Possibility and also the Divine immutability; a bird symbolizes the soul; a tree symbolizes the grades of being; and water symbolizes knowledge and rain revelation.

Manic depression — or bipolar disorder — is like racing up to a clifftop before diving headfirst into a cavity. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the psychic equivalent of an extreme sport. The manic highs — that exhilarating rush to the top of the cliff — make you feel bionic in your hyper-energized capacity for generosity, sexiness and soulfulness. You feel like you have ingested stars and are now glowing from within. It’s unearned confidence-in-extremis — with an emphasis on the con, because you feel cheated once you inevitably crash into that cavity. I sometimes joke that mania is the worst kind of pyramid scheme, one that the bipolar individual doesn’t even know they’re building, only to find out, too late, that they’re also its biggest casualty.

That twinkle in his eye was undimmed. The twinkle that gave an entirely undeserved suggestion of wisdom and charm. The twinkle that could make you walk down the aisle with a man almost ten years your junior and regret it within months. The twinkle you soon realize is actually the beam of a lighthouse, warning you off the rocks.

It is fine to say ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ It is admirable. But it no longer applies when you’re eighty. When you are eighty, whatever doesn’t kill you just ushers you through the next door, and the next door and the next, and all of these doors lock behind you.

Chess is easy,' says Bogdan, continuing the walk between the lines of graves and now flicking on a torch. 'Just always make the best move.' 'Well, I suppose,' says Elizabeth. 'I've never quite thought about it like that. But what if you don't know what the best move is?' 'Then you lose.

I'm afraid I don't know WTF. I only discovered LOL from Joyce last week. I'm going to assume that it doesn't refer to the Warsaw Transit Facility, as that was shut down in 1981 when the Russians came sniffing.

Communism in a capitalist world requires eliminating the hope of the citizens for owning what others own.

The only seed that needs regular watering is our imagination.

What if pretending to enjoy life is the same as actually enjoying it? He has been smiling from the moment Patrice arrived, so perhaps there was something in it.

Night-time is for questions without answers,

No animal is better than any other animal. We are all just a collection of atoms smashed together. Even people. Even trees.

I know many people enjoy your books, and surely they can’t all be wrong?

Not rollercoasters, not skyscrapers, just the accumulation of small moments that turn acquaintance into friendship.

No kneeling for him these days, though, arthritis and Catholicism being an uneasy mix.

Life is about understanding opportunities. Understanding how rarely they come along, and then rising to meet them when they do.

I fear I might be barking up the wrong tree with this one. I just hope I can bark up the right tree one of these days. Before I run out of trees. Or before I stop barking altogether.

Alas!’ he writes, ‘I am morbid, And have put a purple colour about my brow. All men seem eating and drinking the “Joy of the Round Feast,” while I am Melancholy and silent, as though in a Gloomy wood, astray. Strange images of myself did I create, As I gazed into the seeming pit of others, Losing myself in the thoughtfulness Of my unreal self, as humanity saw me. But alas ! on entering to the consciousness Of my real being to find fostering "The all-prevailing woman,” And I strayed with her, into the path direct. “Hail! the Jewel in the Lotus.

It is a meaningful thing for a scientist of the stature of Ibn Sina, certainly one of the best scientific minds in the whole history of mankind, to often resort to prayer to seek God's help in solving his philosophical and scientific problems. And it is also perfectly understandable why the purification of the soul is considered an integral part of the methodology of knowledge.

reject expressed belief – and exchange it for the possibility of genuine change.The believers’ formula is a deception and they are deceived – which is a negation of their purpose. Faith is denial, and the metaphor for faith is idiocy, hence it always fails. To make their power more secure, governments force religion down the throats of their slaves, and it always succeeds. Few people escape it; therefore the honour of those who do is all the greater. When faith perishes, the ‘Self ’ comes into its own.

I don't think you're supposed to use your mobile telephone in here, Elizabeth," says John. She gives a kindly shrug. "Well, imagine if we only ever did what we were supposed to, John." "You have a point there, Elizabeth," agrees John, and goes back to his book.

Elizabeth sits completely still, and waits. It can take a while, but, if you are still long enough, they come to you. Fitful babies, zooming kittens, men with secrets. With nothing to bounce off, their nervous energy eventually seems ridiculous to them, and across they trot.

She had used all the tricks in the book to encourage him, to convince him, to cajole him into looking after himself. But it turned out that, all along, the only real motivation he needed to change was to start having sex with her mum. You have to be so careful what you wish for.

Quietism, Buddhism, and other religions, everything which denies the flesh—is the great inferiority to God in ourselves, an escapism seeking sanctuary through fear of life and inability to accept 'this reality'. They were hurt? Or was the odalisque unsatisfactory or too expensive? They expected too much for too little, or were too mean to pay—therefore: "All is illusion". But the Stoic smilingly awaits the next shower of shit from heaven. Stoics are not Saviours, Saints or Heroes and are often confused and weary, yet they prefer to find their own way and to accept life as they find it. The schizophrenics, the melancholics and psychotics—they at least are secretive and inflict no religions on others. They prove the possibilities and utilities of 'as if' when totally accepted.

Patrice has fallen in love before, and this is beginning to show all the signs. That might just be the wine and the Jane Austen, though.

The unity of scientific and spiritual knowledge is realized when each of the particular sciences is organically related to the supreme knowledge of al-tawhid.

kneeling over the age of sixty-five is a pipe dream, so she sits on the step above instead. Elizabeth kneels. Is there nothing she can’t do?

There comes a time when progress is only for other people.

That’s what happens when you get older. Too many funerals, not enough weddings.

You will go completely mad waiting for life to be fair

I mean, we have KISSED. sort of. platonically made out.

Everyone is vulnerable. For some people, for Steve, it comes out as fear, avoiding situations where the vulnerability is exposed. For others, for an awful lot of people these days, vulnerability comes out as anger, pushing away anything that feels like it might pierce their shell. Steve watches

In those sticky summer nights in South London our windows stay open and our tiny apartment becomes our secret garden. The magic of the secret garden is that it exists in our imagination. There are no limits, no borderlines. The secret garden leads to the marigolds of Mogadishu and the magnolias of Kingston and when the heat turns us sticky and sweet and unwilling to be claimed by defeat we own the night. We own our bodies. We own our lives.

I’d outlive a dog through pure spite,’ says Ron. ‘We’d just sit in opposite corners of the room, staring each other out, and see who went first. Not me. It’s like when we were negotiating with British Leyland in ’seventy-eight. The moment one of their lot went to the loo first, I knew we had ’em.’ Ron knocks back more wine. ‘Never go to the loo first. Tie a knot in it if you have to.

We might see a million white swans, and yet we are not able to say that all swans are white. Yet we see just one black swan, and we can say with absolute certainty that not all swans are white.

There comes a point when you look at your photograph albums more often than you watch the news. When you opt out of time, and let it carry on doing its thing while you get on with yours. You simply stop dancing to the beat of the drum.

Home is in my hair, my lips, my arms, my thighs, my feet and my hands. I am my own home. And when I wake up crying in the morning, thinking of how lonely I am, I pinch my skin, tug at my hair, remind myself that I am alive. Remind myself to step outside and greet the morning. Remind myself that it’s all about forward motion. It’s all about change. It’s all about that elusive state. Freedom.

I texted "Happy New Year" to Joanna, and she texted back "HNY," as if the effort of spelling out the words was a bit too much. I texted "Happy New Year" to Victor too, and he texted back. "May you be granted health and wealth and wisdom, and may you see your beauty reflected in those around you," which was much more like it.

Ayrılık dediğin dolapta çürüyüp gitmiş bir domatesi çöpe atmak gibi bir şey mi? Boş şişeleri kapıcı Osman Bey alsın diye kapının önüne koyuvermek mi? Bir insanı geride bıraktığında, sırf onu mu bırakıyorsun geride? Onunla dahil olduğun dünyayı ‘artık miadını doldurdu’ deyip kırmızı bir tuşa basıp havaya uçurmak ve başka bir gezegene taşınmak diye bir şey var mı? Hayatlarında hiç yalnız kalmamış kadınlar beni anlar mı peki?

I see,” says Elizabeth, lips pursing. “And what happens if I still choose to say WPC? Will there be a warrant for my arrest?” “No, but I’ll think a bit less of you,” says Donna. “Because it’s a really simple thing to do, and it’s more respectful to me.” “Damn, checkmate, okay,” says Elizabeth, unpursing her lips. “Thank you,” says Donna.

There is another dating app for gay men called Grindr. Perhaps it’s for gay women too? I don’t know, I didn’t ask. Would they use the same one? That would be nice.

They can take me as they find me,' says Ron. 'I've earned this face, it tells a story.

Ever so ambitious, but they only use 'ambitious' as a criticism about women, don't they?

They say a man who desires revenge should dig two graves, and this is surely right.

Elizabeth taps her head. “My palace has many rooms. Some are dustier than others.

Big is the same as small. There's just more of it.

Every true soul is unknowable,

One day, spring will come without her.

Everyone has to leave the game. Once you’re in, there is no other door but the exit.

I’ve always found that shirts sort of iron themselves while you’re wearing them.

Life goes on, until it doesn’t.

Funny to think of the year 2000 as ancient history.

কল্পনা তো মিথ্যাই হয়ে যায় না। মহাকাল তাকে বরণ করে।

Elizabeth looks to Donna like the sort of teacher who terrifies you all year but then gives you a grade A and cries when you leave.

The only way anyone can afford to buy a house these days is to have bought it fifteen years ago.

Always alone, and never alone: that was grief.

He keeps finding pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but no one will show him the picture on the front of the box.

In Somali culture hyper-masculinity is the most desired attribute in men. Femininity signifies softness, a lightness of touch: qualities that are aggressively pressed onto young girls and women. When a woman does not possess feminine traits, it is considered an act of mild social resistance. This applies equally to men who are not overtly masculine but the stakes are considerably amplified. If a Somali man is considered feminine he is deemed weak, helpless, pitiful: The underlying message being that femininity is inherently inferior to masculinity.

The life she had with Stephen will always mean more to her than the life she will now have going forward. She will spend more time there, in that past, she knows that. And, as the world races forward, she will fall further and further back.

How many more autumns for Elizabeth? How many more years of slipping on a pair of comfortable boots and walking through the leaves? One day, spring will come without her. The daffodils will always come up by the lake, but you won’t always be there to see them. So it goes; enjoy them while you can.

I am not a vegan and have no intention of ever becoming one, but I still feel like it's something that should be encouraged. I read that if mankind doesn't stop eating meat, there will be mass starvation by 2050. With respect, I am nearly eighty, and so this won't be my problem, but I do hope they sort it out.

He who deceives another deceives himself much more. Therefore know the Charlatans by their love of rich robes, ceremony, ritual, magical retirements, absurd conditions, and other stupidity, too numerous to relate. Their entire doctrine a boastful display, a cowardice hungering for notoriety; their standard everything unnecessary, their certain failure assured. Hence it is that those with some natural ability quickly lose it by their teaching. They can only dogmatise, implant and multiply that which is entirely superficial. Were I a teacher I should not act as master, as knowing more, the pupil could lay no claim to discipleship. Assimilating slowly, he would not be conscious of his learning, he would not repeat the vital mistake; without fear he would accomplish with ease. The only teaching possible is to show a man how to learn from his own wisdom, and to utilise his ignorance and mistakes. Not by obscuring his vision and intention by righteousness. 

Like someone reached in and took out my heart and my lungs and told me to keep living. Keep waking up, keep eating, keep putting one foot in front of the other. For what? I don’t think I ever really found an answer to that.

As a young gay African, I have been conditioned from an early age to consider my sexuality a dangerous deviation from my true heritage as a Somali by close kin and friends. As a young gay African coming of age in London, there was another whiplash of cultural confusion that one had to recover from again and again: that accepting your sexual identity doesn’t necessarily mean that the wider LGBT community, with its own preconceived notions of what constitutes a "valid" queer identity, will embrace you any more welcomingly than your own prejudiced kinsfolk do.

Quite so,” agrees Stephen, his voice quiet. “Nail hit well and truly on the head there, old girl. We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we hurry alongside it to keep up. Hurry, hurry, mustn’t fall behind. But it doesn’t, you see. Time just swirls around us. Everything is always present. The things we’ve done, the people we’ve loved, the people we’ve hurt, they’re all still here.

I volunteer because it makes me look helpful, and it gives me first dibs on the refreshments.

The business of dying keeps different hours than the business of living. 45.

Don’t get a small dog, though, Joyce,” says Ron. “Small dogs are like small men: always got a point to prove. Yapping it up, barking at cars.

শোন, হারুনর রশীদ । দীরহাম দৌলত দিয়ে ক্রীতদাস গোলাম কেনা চলে । বান্দী কেনা সম্ভব –। কিন্তু – কিন্তু—ক্রীতদাসের হাসি – না – না—না—না ।

Everything is about death, you see.’ ‘Well, recently, yes,’ agrees Joyce. ‘But surely not everything? That seems a bit much?’ ‘In essence,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Our existence only makes sense because of it; it provides meaning to our narrative. Our direction of travel is always towards it. Our behaviour is either because we fear it, or because we choose to deny it. We could drive past this spot once a year, every year, and neither the horse nor ourselves would get younger. Everything is death.

The difference between good and evil is a matter of profundity. Which is nearer you, self-love and its immorality or love and morals? Not conscious of desert the compeer of Heaven, and constant happiness in wisdom is the capacity of direction. From self-glorification, from self-exaltation we rise superior to the incapacity of disquieting fear: the ridiculer to destruction of humility in repentance. This "self-love" that does not give but is glad to receive is the genuine opportunity for freedom from covetousness, from the militant amusement of Heaven. He who subordinates animal instincts to reason, quickly loses control.

Dear Stephen,’ he begins. ‘This is a difficult letter to write, but I know it will be a great deal more difficult to read. I will come straight to it. I believe you are in the early stages of dementia, possibly Alzheimer’s.’ Elizabeth can hear her heart beating through her chest. Who on earth has chosen to shatter their privacy this way? Who even knows? Her friends? Has one of them written? They wouldn’t dare, not without asking. Not Ibrahim, surely? He might dare. ‘I am not an expert, but it is something I have been looking into. You are forgetting things, and you are getting confused. I know full well what you will say – “But I’ve always forgotten things. I’ve always been confused!” – and you are right, of course, but this, Stephen, is of a different order. Something is not right with you, and everything I read points in just one direction.’ ‘Stephen,’ says Elizabeth, but he gently gestures for hush. ‘You must also know that dementia points in just one direction. Once you start to descend the slope, and please believe me when I say you have started, there is no return. There may be footholds here and there, there may be ledges on which to rest, and the view may still be beautiful from time to time, but you will not clamber back up.’ ‘Stephen, who wrote you this letter?’ Elizabeth asks. Stephen holds up a finger, asking her to be patient a few moments more. Elizabeth’s fury is decreasing. The letter is something she should have written to him herself. This should not have been left to a stranger. Stephen starts

That’s the thing about Coopers Chase. You’d imagine it was quiet and sedate, like a village pond on a summer’s day. But in truth it never stops moving, it’s always in motion. And that motion is ageing, and death, and love, and grief, and final snatched moments and opportunities grasped. The urgency of old age. There’s nothing that makes you feel more alive than the certainty of death.

Donna smiles again. Her eyes have remained shut. This is peaceful, this is helping. Just saying things out loud. Was this therapy? It didn’t feel like it. It just felt like finally telling somebody the truth.

But Steve has learnt you must never resent other people for their happiness. Everyone is taking the best shot they've got, and some shots are just luckier than yours. Anytime you feel your unhappiness turning into bitterness, you have to check yourself. You can live with unhappiness, but bitterness will kill you.

If intellectual capacity is a sniper’s foremost qualification, the number two trait is patience. We will take out any enemy we have to when the situation calls for it, whether that means using a rifle, a handgun, a knife, or our bare hands. Yet the sniper’s fundamental craft is not killing a person, but being able to get close enough to do so. Osman and I were on a classic sniper stalking mission: track, sneak up, observe, and disappear again, leaving no trace behind.

The conception of "I am not" must of necessity follow the conception of "I am," because of its grammar, as surely in this world of sorrow night follows day. The recognition of pain as such, implies the idea of pleasure, and so with all ideas. By this duality, let him remember to laugh at all times, recognize all things, resist nothing; then there is no conflict, incompatibility or compulsion as such. 

Ah, čijem si se zahvalila, tašta ljudska oholasti? Sve što više stereš krila, sve ćeš paka niže pasti! Vjekovite i bez svrhe nije pod suncem krepke stvari, a u visocijeh gora vrhe najprije ognjen trijes udari. Bez pomoći višnje s nebi svijeta je stavnos svijem bjeguća: satiru se sama u sebi silna carstva i moguća. Kolo od sreće uokoli vrteći se ne pristaje: tko bi gori, eto je doli, a tko doli gori ustaje. Sad vrh sablje kruna visi, sad vrh krune sablja pada, sad na carstvo rob se uzvisi, a tko car bi, rob je sada.

but, really, unconditional love has a huge flaw. If you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn’t matter. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what can you do to make them love you more or love you less? Nothing: there is no space. So the only option left to you is to continually prod at that unconditional love, to test it and stretch it, to mock it even.

He saw that a moon arose from the holy man’s breast and came to sink in his own breast. A tree then sprouted from his navel and its shade compassed the world. Beneath this shade there were mountains, and streams flowed forth from the foot of each mountain. Some people drank from these running waters, others watered gardens, while yet others caused fountains to flow. When Osman awoke he told the story to the holy man, who said ‘Osman, my son, congratulations, for God has given the imperial office to you and your descendants and my daughter Malhun shall be your wife’.

Man in the misery of his illusions and unsatisfied desires, wings his flight to different religions, and doctrines, seeks redeception, a hypnotic, a palliative from which he suffers fresh miseries in exhaustion. The terms of the cure are new illusions, greater entanglement, more stagnant environment.  Having studied all ways and means to pleasure and pondered over them well again and again, this self-love has been found by me to be the only free, true and full one, nothing more sane, pure, and complete. There is no deceit: when by this all experience certainly is known, everything sublimely beautiful and exceedingly amiable: where is the necessity of other means? Like the drink to the drunkard everything should be sacrificed for it. This Self-love is now declared by me the means of evolving millions of ideas for pleasure without love, or its synonyms- self-reproach, sickness, old-age, and death. The Symposium of self and love. O! Wise Man, Please Thyself. 

Rumi says: O seeker of the Truth! Be happy if you have sorrows! They are the tricks of reunion that the Beloved has set for you since one remembers Allah and seeks refuge in Him when one is overcome by sorrow. Sorrow is a treasure. Your illnesses and the other troubles you face are all treasures. Likewise, sorrow is as a blessed wind that blows on the mirror of the heart to clear the dust from it; never compare it with harmful winds. In this path of love, no one but grief remembers me, thousands of thanks to it.

There may not be any romance to mental illness but who needs romance when the preferable route is agency? The prevailing conversation around mental health issues is agency and the lack thereof on the part of the mentally ill. But what do you do if you’re a paid-up member of the mentally ill populace in question? Do you curl up into a ball and give up? No, you look for solutions. Ultimately, it’s about keeping despair at bay and sometimes simple things like running, taking up a hobby, doing charity work, painting or, in my case, writing can be a galvanizing part of the recovery process. Keeping the brain and the body active can give life a semblance of pleasure and hope. This is what writing has done for me. I took every traumatic element of my condition and channelled it into something useful.

The Ego is ignorant towards both sigils and symbols, but they both give the Ego a flow of knowledge from themselves. All knowledge of ideas, gained by means of sigils, should be re-clothed in pure symbolism to designate and stimulate its own wisdom. Symbolism is also a means of accelerating and exhausting by living a belief instead of repressing it by choice rather than of necessity, which serves its own time. All begging, self-punishment, sacrifice, etc., is but an attempt to escape the law of reaction or Karma, and by symbolising the reading of these laws, they hope to take that power from nature.

Hidden treasure does not come at your word or by digging with your hands in the main road. Even with the proper implements and accurate knowledge of place, etc., you may just end up re-acquiring what you possessed long ago. There is a great doubt as to whether it is hidden, except by the strata65 of your experiences and atmospheres of your belief. So how does one become a genius? My reply is like the mighty germ: it is in agreement with the Universe, is simple and full of deep import, yet it is for a time extremely objectionable in terms of your ideas of good and beauty. So listen attentively, O aspirant, to my answer, for by living its meaning you shall surely become freed from the bondage of constitutional ignorance. You must live it yourself: I cannot live it for you. The chief cause of genius is the realization of ‘I’ by an emotion that allows the instant assimilation of what is perceived. This emotion could be called ‘immoral’ in that it allows the free association of knowledge without being encumbered by belief. Its condition is therefore ignorance of ‘I am’ and ‘I am not’: instead of believing, there is a kind of absentmindedness. Its most excellent state is the ‘NeitherNeither’, the free or atmospheric ‘I’.

i have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in a decadent, amoral Western society that has corrupted who I really am. But who am I, really? Am I allowed to speak for myself or must my desires form the battleground for causes I do not care about? My answer to that is simple: ‘no one allows anyone anything.’ By rejecting that notion you discover that only you can give yourself permission on how to lead your life, naysayers be damned. In the end something gives way. The earth doesn’t move but something shifts. That shift is change and change is the layman’s lingo for that elusive state that lovers, dreamers, prophets and politicians call ‘freedom’.

Why does she always push her mum away? There’s something about that relationship, something about being a child, and the need of a child to be an individual, to be something more than the things she’s been taught and the way she’s been raised. The need to somehow teach a lesson to the person who has taught her so many lessons? Joyce’s love for her is unconditional, Joanna knows that, but, really, unconditional love has a huge flaw. If you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn’t matter. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what can you do to make them love you more or love you less? Nothing: there is no space. So the only option left to you is to continually prod at that unconditional love, to test it and stretch it, to mock it even. And it’s not just that. There is a further problem with unconditional love, isn’t there? Because what if you don’t love yourself? What if, like Joanna, you obsess over your flaws and weaknesses, you constantly update the balance sheet of your own personality and find it wanting? Well, then the unconditional love of a parent is a sign that they simply don’t know you. If they truly knew you, their love would be peppered with caveats. “I love you, but…

She was a spiky teenager rebelling against the soul-suck mirror reflected back at her in her mother’s blank stare, her question mark of a spine. Determined to beat the odds, she completed high school with distinction. But there was a caveat. Beydan was allowed to roam and educate herself – up to a point. On her eighteenth birthday her Father sat her down and held out his Rolexed wrist. Studded with crystals and flecks of diamond, the watch dazzled in the light. All Beydan could hear, however, was tick-tock-tick-tick-tick-tick - time to neatly fold all her hard work, to parcel up her progress, send it to the attic in her subconscious and let dust gather on her dreams. There was a lump in her throat and a stopwatch in her womb.