Where I come from," said Archie, "a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her." "Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean," said Samad tersely, "that it is a good idea.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the importance of understanding and knowing a partner before committing to marriage.
In this quote, Archie implies that in his culture, it's standard to develop a connection with a partner prior to marriage, suggesting a thoughtful approach to relationships. Samad counters this notion by drawing a parallel to the way vegetables are cooked in his culture, emphasizing that just because something is customary does not necessarily make it the best practice. This exchange reflects the tension between cultural norms and personal values in relationships.
In practice
During a wedding speech, one might reference the importance of knowing one's partner well before marriage.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.
Chimpanzees have very strong preferences and aversions that are completely personality-linked. The people who are unsuccessful in working with chimpanzees are those who take this personally.
For many women, and a fair number of men, saying 'I'm sorry' isn't literally an apology; it's a ritual way of restoring balance to a conversation.
Listening without bias or distraction is the greatest value you can pay another person.
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling that I didn't fully belong, that my parents didn't belong.
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