The hijab, or sikh turban, or Jewish skullcap are all explicit symbols, but they do not represent a threat or affront to others, and have no bearing on the competence, skills and intelligence of a person.
We are, at almost every point of our day, immersed in cultural diversity: faces, clothes, smells, attitudes, values, traditions, behaviours, beliefs, rituals.
I’m starting to realize that being born into this social world is a little like being born into clean air. You take it in as soon as you breathe, and pretty soon you don’t even realize that while you can walk around with clear lungs, other people are wearing oxygen masks just to survive.
Grief, especially when it’s still raw, is like having a thirst that no amount of water quenches. It can’t be consoled; it can’t be alleviated. It’s unrelenting and constant. I wish I could tell her that it will get easier with time. But if I told her that I’d also have to tell her that easier doesn’t mean it ever goes away.
Maybe you only get one chance at meeting somebody who really gets inside you, wakes corners of your mind and heart that you didn’t know were asleep.
I wear my politics like hand-me down clothes: some bits feel like they don’t fit me properly, but I expect I’ll grow into them, trusting that because they’re from my parents they’ve come from a good source.
I’ve never done grey before, but I suspect it’s one of those things that, tried once, you can never resile from.
How naive she must be to think that life is so safe and predictable that you can survive without some level of independence and autonomy.
A pang of love for my country suddenly strikes through me. That lazy way the trees and bushes dot the land. The effortless beauty of the mountains and the secrets hidden within them.
A reminder that for some people in this world, freedom and ordinary aren’t basic rights. They’re luxuries you should never take for granted.
The scariest thing about people like Terrence and my parents is not that they can be cruel. It’s that they can be kind too.
I know I’ve got to work twice as hard as everybody else because I’ve got twice the distance to run just to catch up.
Unrequited love is better than returned love that fails. That way I can dream.
Words. And meaning. You can’t own one and not the other.
I think some people just can’t handle people who go about their life genuinely not caring about what other people think.
Before Mina, my life was like a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Mina’s come along and pushed the puzzle upside down onto the floor. I have to start all over again, figuring out where the pieces go. But some of the pieces to the puzzle don’t seem to fit the way they used to. The thought terrifies me.
It’s so much easier to live in a world where everything is black and white. I’ve never done grey before, but I suspect it’s one of those things that, tried once, you can never go back.
Bad things happen when good people remain silent.
I want to tell him that when we were in the camps waiting for a boat we spoke about what we imagined Australia would be like. Kangaroos, koalas, wide open spaces. Then, when we arrived, we were locked up and the images we had shrank smaller and smaller until Australia became tiny patches of sky beyond the barbed wire.
I’m sorry for what happened to your family and your people, but why must we be punished?
You know what? Who cares what normal is, Simone. Let’s protest. From now on we’re the anti-normal, anti-average, anti-standard. You can eat when you want to, I’ll wear what I want, and we’ll die with a packet of chips in our hand and a tablecloth on our head.