Arabic Writing Quotes & Sayings

It sometimes happens to me while writing, that I seek a word; mischievous as it is it appears in English, it appears in Arabic, but refuses to come in Hebrew. To some extent I made up my Hebrew. Unquestionably, the influence of Arabic is dominant, my syntax is almost Arabic. — Sami Michael

She looks like a warrior. I mean, Bellatrix does mean warrior. And she's also a bit of a fatale. She's the right hand of Voldemort, and the only woman death eater. — Helena Bonham Carter

And this is for Colored girls who have considered suicide, but are moving to the ends of their own rainbows. — Ntozake Shange

Modern Arabic literature achieved international recognition when Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel prize in 1988 ( ... ) Mahfouz also rendered Arabic literature a great service by developing, over the years, a form of language in which many of the archaisms and cliches that had become fashionable were discarded, a language that could serve as an adequate instrument for the writing of fiction in these times. — Denys Johnson-Davies

Sumerian scribes invented the practice of writing in cuneiform on clay tablets sometime around 3400 B.C. in the Uruk/Warka region in the south of ancient Iraq. [The etymology of 'Iraq' may come from this region, biblical Erech. Medieval Arabic sources used the name 'Iraq' as a geographical term for the area in the south and center of the modern republic.] — John A. Halloran

I learned that people like my work because I praise things that others don't like. — John Waters

The visual can seduce you, leading to false deductions, and ultimately, even the finest ideas can be reduced. Take for example, sexuality. If it is reduced down to the moment and to pleasure, things like that, that's not what sexuality is all about. Sexuality was to be in tandem with the sacred, not amputated from it. — Ravi Zacharias

I've noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one. — Elizabeth Kostova

When women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. — Benjamin Franklin

I couldn't know about my culture, my history, without learning the language, so I started learning Arabic - reading, writing. I used to speak Arabic before that, but Tunisian Arabic dialect. Step by step, I discovered calligraphy. I painted before and I just brought the calligraphy into my artwork. That's how everything started. The funny thing is the fact that going back to my roots made me feel French. — EL Seed

As Petrus Alfonsi, the converted physician authored a book called the Disciplina Clericalis, which was essentially a collection of Arabic tales translated into Latin. These tales introduced a mode of Oriental storytelling and wisdom literature into Christendom that would become extremely popular. In the section called "The Mule and the Fox," concerning the true nature of nobility, Alfonsi listed seven accomplishments expected of a knight. "The skills that one must be acquainted with are as follows: Riding, swimming, archery, boxing, hawking, chess, and verse writing."6 So, by the beginning of the twelfth century, chess had become a mandatory skill for Spain's elite warriors. — Marilyn Yalom

The only technical things I know are treble, volume and reverb, that's all. — Johnny Thunders

The wounds would become her armor, and a constant reminder of her victory.
She might be broken. She might be crazy. But she would never be defeated — Marissa Meyer

I'd put him in the spot where he got hit. It was my fault he got shot. A hundred kills? Two hundred? More? What did they mean if my brother was dead? — Chris Kyle

I spend my night writing you love letters;The eraser
Then spend my day
Erasing each, word by word.
Your eyes are my golden compasses;
They point me toward the sea of separation!

(translated from the Arabic by Sivar Qazaz) — Ghada Samman

All the sciences came to exist in Arabic. The systematic works on them were written in Arabic writing. — Ibn Khaldun

America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles. — Djimon Hounsou

Every form seems to be derived from another, all figures being derived from Alif which is originally derived from a dot and represents zero, nothingness (In Arabic the zero is written as a dot.) It is that nothingness which creates the first form Alif. It is natural for everyone when writing to make a dot as soon as the pen touches the paper, and the letters forming the words hide the origin. In like manner the origin of the One Being is hidden in His manifestation. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Everything has changed. I cannot be used anymore. Those days are over. I know too much. What I do now, I do for me. — China Mieville

I still write in literary Arabic but I try to rid it of the rhetoric, the symbolism, and the stuff that ordinary people don't understand. — Hassan Blasim

Jenny Marzen made millions of dollars, as opposed to nickels, by writing novels that got seriously reviewed while selling big. Amy had skimmed her first one, a mildly clever thing about a philosophy professor who discovers her husband is cheating on her with one of her grad students, and who, while feigning ignorance of the affair, drives the girl mad with increasingly brutal critiques and research tasks, at one point banishing her to Beirut, first to learn fluent Arabic and then to read Avicenna's Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, housed in the American University. This was, Amy thought, a showoffy detail that hinted at Marzen's impressive erudition but was probably arrived at within five Googling minutes. — Jincy Willett