10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World

Nalan thought that one of the endless tragedies of human history was that pessimists were better at surviving than optimists, which meant that, logically speaking, humanity carried the genes of people who did not believe in humanity.

Ali said that, as a rule, people who overused the word ‘natural’ did not know much about the ways of Mother Nature. If you told them how snails, worms and black sea bass were hermaphrodites, or male seahorses could give birth, or male clownfish turned female halfway through their lives, or male cuttlefish were transvestites, they would be surprised. Anyone who studied nature closely would think twice before using the word ‘natural’

One cannot change geography , he’d say, but one can trick destiny

Binnaz started to cry. These were not tears of rage or resentment. They were tears of resignation, of the kind of defeat that is tantamount to a loss of greater faith

As far as she was concerned, the apocalypse was not the worst thing that could happen. The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilization was not half as frightening as the simple realization that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us. Now that , she had always thought, was terrifying.

Don’t try to bring new customs to an old village

Life at full blast.

Assumest not that thou art alive but I am gone.

Nothing is what it seems in this forgotten land …

Rules were sieves with holes so large that all sorts of things could pass through; rules were sticks of chewing gum that had long lost their taste but could not be spat out;

Truth could be corrosive, a mercurial liquor. It could eat holes in the bulwarks of daily life, destroying entire edifices.