Mahvesh Murad > Quotes

“The circle that they drew was laid with fresh petals from the cherry tree on a bed of salt...”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Wishing for love is the same as wishing for more wishes.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Memory depends on the medium, I thought; brains are such imperfect recorders. I”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Just enough heat to smooth, not enough to scorch... Careful judgment, minute by minute.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The power I exert, I do so because I am wise, and clever, and know something of the turning of the world.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.

My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.

The most beautiful among the beautiful…

My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf…

My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world…

My Constantinople, my Caraman, the earth of my Anatolia
My Badakhshan, my Baghdad and Khorasan

My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief…

I’ll sing your praises always

I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Spite houses are buildings constructed or modified to antagonize neighbours or landowners, usually by blocking access or light. They have one purpose, and one purpose only; although technically ‘houses’, these buildings are often symbols of defiance rather than genuine attempts at a home. When building a spite house, the comfort and safety of someone living inside are secondary considerations at best. What does it matter if the bedroom is too narrow to fit a bed? What does it matter if there’s no electricity or gas or running water? What does it matter if there’s no ventilation or natural light? If the house is awkward and dark and damp, if the house rattles in the wind or leaks in the rain, if the house presses its bare walls to your shoulder as you walk through the rooms? If the house is not, in fact, a usable home–then the spite burns all the stronger.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“a swirl of smoke trapped in a glass bottle, an odd unlabelled thing unknowingly put up for sale.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The blessed lives of model-types, banking on the envy of the unwashed populace to earn their keep.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“Then he saw it. The feet of every man in the congregation were turned backwards at the ankles.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“It seems to me that the woman who saves the sickly child by her skill is called a witch, and the one who cannot save the child who is destined to die is also called the same. Success or failure, a woman of power is always prey to suspicion.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“They were taller than the tallest men in the village”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“The wishes in this story are wishes built the way wishes are always built, and the way bullets are built too, to keep going long after they’ve left the safety of silence. Each person is a projectile filled with sharp voice and broken volume, blasts of maybe.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

“You want to meet for a drink? Do I? This is all getting a little bit real for an evening where I ate takeout Indian and have a Game of Thrones episode waiting in the queue.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“While I’m thinking she wiggles her way under my arm and stares the way they do when they want you to kiss them, and I recall that I’ll be dead one day and won’t be able to go back to a strange woman’s apartment and touch her vagina.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“He parked in a side street behind the historic Labia theatre with its neon pink hearts and fairy lights blinking in the art-deco windows.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“Initial points of mutual interest were B-movies, Douglas Adams, and Vampire the Masquerade, which it turned out we both owned but neither had ever successfully cajoled another person into playing.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“She didn’t have to waste a coin on it, she had the same song on her music player, but she did it for the effect.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“Apart from old people, Pinky didn’t like African refugees, Filipino workers, Russian immigrants, beggars, teachers, fat people, stuck-up girls who wouldn’t talk to him, Arabs (obviously), Orthodox Jews (obviously), social workers and, of course, the police.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“else, if the whole universe is God’s overly complex Rube Goldberg machine,”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“Always night shifts. It’s just better. I prefer the places and times where you meet people at a crossroads, so to speak.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“ladder of ruin”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“I call her Disco Madonna,” Sister Mary Thomas says. “You do?” Betsy says. Sister Mary Thomas finds that response funny and laughs yet again and then she starts singing “Lady Madonna” by the Beatles but she changes it to “Disco Madonna.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“Fucking disgrace in here… I told you we should’ve gone to the Cock and Trumpet. The service is so much faster in the Cock.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“What is up with this girl? Looks like a pre-school teacher but she lives next to a crack house.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours

“Liquid silver and silk...”
― Mahvesh Murad

“Trusty phone to the rescue, I guess. I open YouTube and search ‘one hour candle flickering’ and open the first of the apparently six thousand hour-long videos of flickering candles. Thank god for the Internet. Let’s hope that demons aren’t sticklers for tradition.”
― Mahvesh Murad, The Outcast Hours