“You and I, your mother, Ahlam, we are from up there,' my father continued. 'We come from the stunning stars. We were just born in the wrong place. We were meant to live on another planet. The people who come to the desert are those who know this, deep inside of them, we are from up there. From far, far away.”

“You know the most common phrase in the movies is 'let's get out of here?”

“Look at the lonely fisherman,' my father says.'Look at his view,' my mother says.”

“I understood it in my bones. Longing made the music bigger.”

“With the years, we become even more ourselves and call this change.”

“We remained talking, fighting gently or viciously for what seemed like hours, but it was only minutes or perhaps a second, because it was only a dream.”

“Through my sudden tears, the train lights smeared like shooting stars. Lying before the rippling blue window, below the slurred lights of the world above, it was as if we were underwater.”

“Like hunting for a dead beloved's face among the living, in places, we find the place we loved before.”

“We both knew no bounds to our escapism.”

“I lit a cigarette. 'Go ahead, take a smoke,' my father said. 'It won't kill you. Only sadness will.”

“One day you look in the mirror and you see your parents' sadness in your eyes.”