Alif the Unseen

Better chaos than slow suffocation.

I was afraid you’d turn into one of those literary types who say books can change the world when they’re feeling good about themselves and it’s only a book when anybody challenges them.

Wonder and awe have gone out of your religions. You are prepared to accept the irrational, but not the transcendent.

“Belief,” said the man. “It doesn’t mean the same thing it used to, not for you. You have unlearned the hidden half of the world.”

Alif found himself succumbing to the silence of the place, a quiet so open and broad that it seemed almost to roar, as though it was not silence at all but music in some ancient inaudible key.

When two people form a relationship online, it isn’t a fiction based on real life, it’s real life based on a fiction.

Surely God wouldn’t mind people pretending life is better, even if it involves fictional pork.

In God’s eyes whatever will happen has already ended.

All cats are half djinn, but I think she’s three-quarters.”

He, on the other hand, could do nothing but fall in love with a face he had never seen.