Avleos Quotes

Ocean had given me hope. He'd made me believe in people again. His sincerity had rubbed me raw, had peeled back the stubborn layers of anger I'd lived in for so long. Ocean made me want to give the world a second chance. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I often felt like a very old person trapped in a young person's body. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I dressed the way I did not because I was trying to be a nun, but because it felt good - and because it made me feel less vulnerable in general, like I wore a kind of armor every day. It was a personal preference. ~ Tahereh Mafi

When I was a kid and would tell my mom that people at school were mean to me, she'd pat me on the head and tell me stories about how she'd lived through war and an actual revolution, and when she was fifteen someone cracked open her skull in the middle of the street while her
best friend was gutted like a fish so, hey, why don't you just eat your Cheerios and walk it off, you ungrateful American child. I ate my cheerios. I didn't talk about it. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Be careful with that ," I said, nodding at the paper, "because if you text me too much, you'll have to marry me. It's the rules in my religion. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I was required by law and the wooden spoon my mom liked to whoop my ass with to show up [at school ]every day, so I did. ~ Tahereh Mafi

He said he promised he wouldn't try to kiss me again and I wanted to say don't you dare promise not to kiss me again but I didn't. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Ocean, azizam," she said, "please tell Shirin she should stop swearing so much. It's always asshole this, bullshit that. I say to her, Shirin joon, why are you so obsessed with shit? Why everything is shit? ~ Tahereh Mafi

I got lost in the feel of him, in the heat of his skin, in the way his body shook when he broke away and I felt like I was dreaming, like I'd forgotten how to think.
(...) We broke apart, fighting to breathe, holding on to each other like we were drowning, like we'd been lost, left for dead in a very large expanse of sea. ~ Tahereh Mafi

The day passed.
People had butchered my name, teachers hadn't known what the hell to do with me, my math teacher looked at my face and gave a five-minute speech to the class about how people who don't love this country should just go back to where they came from and I stared at my textbook so hard it was days before I could get the quadratic equation out of my head.
Not one of my classmates spoke to me, no one but the kid who accidentally assaulted my shoulder with his bio book.
I wished I didn't care. ~ Tahereh Mafi

How can you say that?" he said, and I heard his voice break. "How can you even think that? I want this more than I've ever wanted anything. I want everything with you," he said. "I want all of it with you. I want you. I want this forever. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Please don't walk away from me because you're worried about the opinions of racists and assholes. Walk away from me because you hate me," he said. "Tell me you think I'm stupid and ugly and I swear this would hurt less. ~ Tahereh Mafi