{"author":"Kamila Shamsie","author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie","total_quotes":35,"quotes":[{"text":"This is the worst of our ways of remembering--this tendency to prod the crust of anecdote in the hope of releasing a gush of piping-hot symbolism. ","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["memory","symbolism"],"id":1019,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"I didn’t tell him that I grew up in an ugly city that taught me how to look between dust and rubbish and potholes to find a splinter of glass that looked like unmelting ice, beautiful in its defiance of the sun.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["beauty","dust","rubbish","ugly-city","urban-life"],"id":15690,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"Difficult but worth it-- that's how my mother had once describe life with Omi.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["relatonships","true-love","truth-in-relationships"],"id":21119,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"My ex calls the ochre winter 'autumn' as we queue to hear dock boys play jazz fugues in velvet dark.— Broken Verses.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["code","mystery","romance"],"id":30057,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"I'll fall.''You wont fall.''I'll fall. I'll fall and I'll die.'As I said it, I could see it happening. The foot stepping on air, pulling the rest of my body with it, tree limbs breaking as I plummeted down. 'No,' he said, his voice assured, 'You'd never do that to me.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["death","falling"],"id":36606,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"They adore you beacause they think you offer up your friendship and ask for nothing in return. But that's not true-' He took a deep breath. 'You do ask for something. You ask that we never expect you to need us.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["friendship","need","separation"],"id":53129,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"All around us, Karachi kept moving.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["cities","karachi","life","motion","moving-on","survival"],"id":56224,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"If we had more reliable systems of law and governance perhaps our friendship would be shallower.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["friendship","government","humour","karachi","pakistan"],"id":82828,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"There is no mystery-- that's the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["relationships","true-love"],"id":129441,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"},{"text":"You have this ability to find beauty in weird places.","author":"Kamila Shamsie","tags":["ability","beauty","optimism","quality","weirdness"],"id":150345,"author_id":"Kamila+Shamsie"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":35,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}