Love is a force unto itself, sayyidi. For love, people consider the unthinkable...and often achieve the impossible. I would not sneer at its power.

My soul sees its equal in you.

You honestly expect me to breathe in a world without air?

Love is—a shade of what I feel.

Get up, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran. You kneel before no one. Least of all me.

You have a beautiful laugh. Like the promise of tomorrow.

There is no one I would rather see the sunrise with than you.

The more a person pushes others away, the clearer it becomes he is in need of love the most.

In what world did you think you could get away with this?" Jalal seethed. "To my cousin? To my family?" His gleaming hilt continued its punishing onslaught.

For his children, he would move mountains.

For the wonder of a first love can never be matched.

There is no greater success as when you turn your enemy into your ally.

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.

The desert became grim, dark and foreboding. A silence of death lay over the land, and it seemed as though the very stars held their breath and twinkled no more.

When the end comes, I will meet it raging.

Ask the woman, she will tell you everything you need to know

I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

Save the Date' feels like a quiet story about two sisters and the men in their lives, kind of reminiscent of the quieter rom-coms of the 1990s; it's very character-driven and not as wedding-focused.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

Priests have to have the right to say that a sin is a sin.

Abandonment doesn't have the sharp but dissipating sting of a slap. It's like a punch to the gut, bruising your skin and driving the precious air from your body.