Black Sunday

a trace of musk carried on the wind sets the dogs on edge, makes them draw closer to the fire. It says that out there is something that does not love the fire; it is watching and it is not afraid.

When surrounded by their peers, most men have two sets of reactions—the real ones and those designed for evaluation by their fellows.

He had a certain amount of surface passion and a range of visible emotion that was wide and not deep. But he was deep, all right, and cold, and those cold depths held sightless, savage things that brushed and bit one another in the dark.

had a certain amount of surface passion and a range of visible emotion that was wide and not deep. But he was deep, all right, and cold, and those cold depths held sightless, savage things that brushed and bit one another in the dark

An Arab could swallow a toad more easily than an insult.

Hospitals threaten us all with the old disasters of childhood, the uncontrolled bowel, the need to weep.

Back among traditional Arabs, his ingrained sexual chauvinism reasserted itself strongly. A woman was a vessel, a servant, a draft animal with no control over her sexual urges, a sow perpetually in heat.

he had often turned suddenly to look at her, expecting to see malice or cunning or distaste. But she was always the same—insolence in her posture and welcome in her face.