Top 50 Randa Abdel-Fattah Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “We are, at almost every point of our day, immersed in cultural diversity: faces, clothes, smells, attitudes, values, traditions, behaviours, beliefs, rituals.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

2. “In a multicultural, diverse society there are countless ways in which people negotiate the everyday lived experience and reality of diversity.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

3. “Bad things happen when good people remain silent.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

4. “To the Muslim woman, the hijab provides a sense of empowerment. It is a personal decision to dress modestly according to the command of a genderless Creator; to assert pride in self, and embrace one’s faith openly, with independence and courageous conviction.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

5. “Belief means nothing without actions.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

6. “Most Muslim women know it is fear and curiosity that cause people to stare. They know it is ignorance and stereotypes that cause people to suppose that a piece of material covering the hair strips a woman of the ability to speak English, pursue a career, work a remote control.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

7. “But persistent name calling? that prolongs hurt. It stretches out. Each nasty word stretches the rubber band further away until finally, one day, it snaps back at you with maximum impact.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

8. “Life isn’t like the movies. People don’t change overnight. people don’t go from arrogant and self-righteous to ashamed and remorseful. They don’t suddenly give in when they’ve spent years taking out. No doesn’t magically become a Yes.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

9. “True friends are those who love you not in spite of your faults and imperfections, but because of them.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

10. “Sometimes it’s easy to lose faith in people. And sometimes one act of kindness is all it takes to give you hope again.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

11. “I do most of my reading on the train ride to and from work. But I always have a book in my handbag so that I can read at any time, anywhere.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

Featured in: Reading Quotes

12. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

13. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

14. “Everything is relative. If you want to understand a problem you look at its cause. You don’t look at its manifestation.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

15. “I want to be with one person in my life. I want to know that the guy I spend the rest of my life with is the first person I share something so intimate and exciting with.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

16. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

17. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

18. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

19. “That’s when this warm feeling buzzes through you and you smile to yourself, knowing God’s watching you, knowing that He knows you’re trying to be strong to please Him.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

Featured in: Strong Quotes

20. “And it’s when I’m standing there this morning, in my PJs and a hijab, next to my mum and my dad, kneeling before God, that I feel a strange sense of calm. I feel like nothing can hurt me, and nothing else matters.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

21. “Parents. Honestly. Sometimes they really do think the world revolves around them.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

22. “You never feel good when you lie. It doesn’t matter how much you want something, if you lie to somebody you love, and they actually, sincerely believe you, you feel like a cockroach that needs some serious Raid action.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

23. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

24. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

25. “I’ve never done grey before, but I suspect it’s one of those things that, tried once, you can never resile from.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

26. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

27. “I couldn’t stop bawling, watching the towers come down. it was a terrible thing to happen. And a terrible thing to realize that I don’t sit though the nigh crying when such horrors happen all the time.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

28. “When it comes to the hijab – why to wear it, whether to wear it, how to wear it – there is theology and then there is practice, and there is huge diversity in both.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

29. “Yes, Simone, he is mentally unstable for being attracted to you. call the men in white suits.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

30. “Unrequited love is better than returned love that fails. That way I can dream.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

31. “It is time Australian Muslims stop being treated as negotiable citizens in their own country. It is time people stop ‘tolerating’ us, presuming some right to decide if we have a place in our own home.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

32. “We have to choices in this world; we either try to survive or to give up.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

33. “I wasn’t rebellious. Other friends had far stricter parents and where there wasn’t a relationship of respect and communication, they were usually the opposite; kids go to the other extreme.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

34. “The easiest way for readers to connect with characters and feel sympathy is to make the character entertaining, sympathetic and likeable.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

35. “Spirituality is deeply personal. Yet, society has to face the fact that certain faiths celebrate spirituality through an overt expression of inner convictions.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

36. “My family are observant Muslims, but I’ve come to the faith through an intellectual conviction, and that’s something that they’ve taught me. It’s never been forced upon me. They’ve given me a very strong identity as an Australian Muslim.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

Featured in: Strong Quotes

37. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

38. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

39. “I’ve always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don’t sit down and think: ‘What political message can I sell?’ I love the creativity of it.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

40. “It’s like one of those scenes from a feel-good Hollywood movie. Where everybody is happy and nobody’s hair fizzes in the wind. Where it doesn’t rain, your shoes stay comfortable all day, and everybody’s jokes are funny.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

41. “If I like a book, I tend to read the author’s entire collection. But I choose mainly through personal recommendations, general word of mouth and book reviews.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

42. “When you exist in the centre of a debate, as a topic, a hypothesis – otherised and stigmatised – you become the prop in a proposition.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

43. “You should take notes whenever you hear interesting or original language.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

44. “I’ve been writing stories since I was a kid. I love writing stories.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

45. “I think some people just can’t handle people who go about their life genuinely not caring about what other people think.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

46. “One of the first serious attempts I made to write a novel was when I was in Grade 6 and I had read ‘Matilda.’ I wrote my own version and my teacher had it bound and permitted me to read it to the class – cementing my love of reading, writing and Roald Dahl!”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

Featured in: Reading Quotes

47. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

48. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

49. “Words. And meaning. You can’t own one and not the other.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah

50. “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.”

— Randa Abdel-Fattah