I struggle to discover what these silent sons of mine want, but words have always failed me. They are sullen even as they tell me they are okay. I know they are lying but there is nothing I can do.

There is no denying it, our past stinks and seeps into our present. Occasionally I get such a potent whiff of history that my mind spins and my stomach lurches.

Your mother wasn’t upset. “Scars stay with you so you don’t forget, ” she said. She seemed almost satisfied.

The first sound a child hears is very important. It determines character. A Muslim child always hears the Azan first. Words in praise of God. Words to live by.

Difficulties were fires. If you kept them in check, you could learn from them. You simply had to know how to fan them the right way.

They want me to contain the raging fires within me. They need me to appreciate glowing embers, to understand that even weak flames need to be managed with a lot of careful planning.

But what is the point of buying vegetables in plastic bags? Everything from the supermarket smells of plastic. Everything from the market smells like it’s supposed to.

Let us think about our attitude of compassion and understanding with which we choose to respond to what is happening around us

The fertilising conflict of individualities is the ultimate meaning of the personal life.

You can't build an adaptable organization without adaptable people - and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to.

Hindsight is not only clearer than perception-in-the-moment but also unfair to those who actually lived through the moment.

Next to victory, there is nothing so sweet as defeat, if only the right adversary overcomes you.

I...have been in that weird state between dreaming and waking, where dreams could be memories and the real world could be a dream.

I came to Nantes two-years-ago and it's much the same today, except that it's totally different.

I wanted to communicate what I had seen, so that others could see it.

Any day you wake up, maybe you die.

Some kids look at me strange in the hallways because I don't decorate my locker.