The alternatives in my life went through my mind. Unemployed, alone, despairing, watching daytime TV. That couldn't end well. Or helping people, like genuinely making a difference. Imagine waking up and doing that every day?

— Ruth Ahmed

The drugs took over and she fell asleep then. Only her face was visible, the medical equipment acting as some hideous hijab for her.

— Ruth Ahmed

The evening that Al and I met became the night that we met. By the time we fell asleep at daybreak we were different people

— Ruth Ahmed

The fires of hell were seventy times hotter than the fires of the iron.

— Ruth Ahmed

There is something so special in the early leaves drifting from the trees - as if we are all to be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh, to start again.

— Ruth Ahmed

There was a time when I was lucky enough to believe that 'There's this girl in Pakistan' would be the worst five words that Al ever said to me. Years later, they would be totally eclipsed by 'They can't find a heartbeat'.

— Ruth Ahmed

The sadness began later, in waves as crushing as the contractions had been,

— Ruth Ahmed

They say some couples are joined in heaven, and on Earth they look for their partner soul to be with. I knew I had found mine in her. And who can fight heaven?

— Ruth Ahmed

When I was a child I burnt the back of my right hand on a hot iron. I can't recall the pain, but there's an eye-shaped scar as testament to it. As a teenager I used to think it was the all seeing eye of the anti-Christ and that I was the devil incarnate. Or at least a minion. It was my right hand, innit? What I do remember though is my father, or Dad as we called him, abandoning the polite Abby, telling me not to cry and to be patient because the fires of hell were seventy times hotter than the fire of the iron.

— Ruth Ahmed

You feel well, Ali? You have a very faraway look on your face, beta,' my dad said. 'Like you have left your heart behind.' He fixed me with eyes as liquid black as mine and for a moment I felt exposed, like he could see right through me. That irrational childhood thought that he could read my mind, maybe.' What nonsense, his heart is here with his mother and his family. Tell him, Ali,' my mother said.' Begum, this generation of boys and girls, you know how they are.' My dad never said my mother's name; she was always Begum, the generic term for 'wife'.

— Ruth Ahmed