Randa Abdel-Fattah quotes

To the Muslim woman, the hijab provides a sense of empowerment. It is a personal decision to dress modestly according to the command of a genderless Creator; to assert pride in self, and embrace one's faith openly, with independence and courageous conviction. (Randa Abdel-Fattah)
We are, at almost every point of our day, immersed in cultural diversity: faces, clothes, smells, attitudes, values, traditions, behaviours, beliefs, rituals.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
In a multicultural, diverse society there are countless ways in which people negotiate the everyday lived experience and reality of diversity.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
When it comes to the hijab - why to wear it, whether to wear it, how to wear it - there is theology and then there is practice, and there is huge diversity in both.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
I love the stuff and material of writing: words. The games you can play with them. The rhythm and lyricism in a good passage of writing. The power of a simple sentence. I also love the paradoxical bind of writing as both freedom and constraint. You start creating characters and scenes out of thin air. But if you do it well enough, that freedom constricts, because your characters are no longer inside you. They become their own people, agents on the page who need to act and think and feel in ways true to who they are...
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Belief means nothing without actions.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Life isn't like the movies. People don't change overnight. people don't go from arrogant and self-righteous to ashamed and remorseful. They don't suddenly give in when they've spent years taking out. No doesn't magically become a Yes.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Sometimes it's easy to lose faith in people. And sometimes one act of kindness is all it takes to give you hope again.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
What's the good of being true to your religion on the outside, if you don't change what's on the inside, were it really counts?
Randa Abdel-Fattah
I want to be with one person in my life. I want to know that the guy I spend the rest of my life with is the first person I share something so intimate and exciting with.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
That's when this warm feeling buzzes through you and you smile to yourself, knowing God's watching you, knowing that He knows you're trying to be strong to please Him. (Randa Abdel-Fattah)
Yeah, don't you take a break?' 'I don't have time for breaks.' 'That's the whole point of a break. When you've got no time, you need a break.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Parents. Honestly. Sometimes they really do think the world revolves around them.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
The relationship between reader and writer in fiction is steeped in vulnerabilities. It really does require trust and faith because some books have the power to transform people. You feel like you can never go back, look at the world in the same way again. And that grand ambition is what I hope to do with my books because at the heart of my writing is a passion for telling stories of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the misunderstood.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Distance in time has made my voice less contrived and subjective. I don't feel I'm writing some kind of diary (which I kind of felt I was doing when I was 16). I am far more conscious of my voice and more disciplined in separating myself from my characters...
Randa Abdel-Fattah
The world of adolescence was all I was interested in exploring, I suppose because there is no other period in your life when you feel as intensely. Love, hate, jealousy, loyalty: I remember the power of these emotions as a teenager and how navigating questions of identity at the same time was truly terrifying and exhilarating. Writing in that moment of a person's life has always felt so right to me.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Religious celebrations, and the good will, high spirits and generosity that mark them, are wonderful occasions for understanding the potential of 'everyday multiculturalism', and how people from diverse faiths can connect and show they care, rather than go down parallel, sometimes hostile, roads.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
A woman's body is her body and what she wears or does not wear is her choice. Get over it and move on.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
When you exist in the centre of a debate, as a topic, a hypothesis - otherised and stigmatised - you become the prop in a proposition.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
For me, religious festivals and celebrations have become an important way to teach my children about how we can transform living with diversity from the superficial 'I eat ethnic food', to something dignified, mutually respectful and worthwhile.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
I wasn't rebellious. Other friends had far stricter parents and where there wasn't a relationship of respect and communication, they were usually the opposite; kids go to the other extreme. (Randa Abdel-Fattah)
You should take notes whenever you hear interesting or original language.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
The easiest way for readers to connect with characters and feel sympathy is to make the character entertaining, sympathetic and likeable.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
I've always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don't sit down and think: 'What political message can I sell?' I love the creativity of it.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
I do most of my reading on the train ride to and from work. But I always have a book in my handbag so that I can read at any time, anywhere.
Randa Abdel-Fattah