Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?
I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'
As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.
I determined to make my peace with Islam, even at the cost of my pride. Those who were surprised and displeased by what I did perhaps failed to see that ... I wanted to make peace between the warring halves of the world, which were also the warring halves of my soul.
