The Rise of Shams Quotes

“He was Lenin in a Lamborghini. He was Gandhi with a gun”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“For it is when calm clouds gather that thunder is made”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“The only response to stupidity and ignorance was silence”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“You are most beautiful in your purest form. You are a manifestation of God himself. Open your eyes and let the light flow right through to your core. All it takes is for you to notice a flicker of leaves, a momentary glance from a loved one, or for a wave to hit your toes and freeze you in that timeless place where you know with every cell in your body that God, indeed is real.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“His transcendent sense of worth had risen and caught up to him. He did not like the world he lived in, and the people in it. He was just as much a victim as he was a culprit of the seven deadly sins.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“The only wealth that mattered was affinity and generosity. Affinity towards oneself and generosity towards the world itself.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“He had never met a girl who shot an arrow straighter than Cupid did”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“That word, confidence, was like butter on a hot stove for Darien, what he considered the most attractive quality in a woman.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“There are no such things as accidents. Only fate redesigned.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Interpreting dreams for Iranians was just as much a sacrament as reading coffee cups was for Turks”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Not long ago, man grew a sense of conscience. He defined himself by what he is, what he thinks, and, more importantly, what he feels—failing to realize that all come from One single source. All of man’s qualities come from One divine being. And that One being has bestowed nature’s hand with the ability to balance itself. Where there is good, there is also evil. And where evil arises, so does good”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Everything for you stems from a physical need. Most of you think with either your belly or what’s below it”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“The yachts’ berth was next to the Yas Marina Circuit, where Formula 1 would come into town once a year. At night, when the lights on its orbicular architecture switched on, the circuit would radiate like a constellation of stars”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“And envy, envious of a time when the poet, the mystic, the scientist and the statesman were nobler than the merchant.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Take a child away from a mother and she will bring the world to its knees for justice to be served.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“In searching for himself, he had come to understand that he was defined by selflessness”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Dubai, with all of its glitz and glamour rose in the heart of the desert.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“He was everyone and every living creature in one ecstatic motion.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Hope had only revealed herself to him when he was immersed in darkness”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Pilgrims from all over the world were making their way to the place deemed the pearl of the Middle East. The city was reminiscent of a modern-day Persepolis. Its buildings, like towering pillars, tested the sky’s limit. The evenly paved roads belched with the smell of new tarmac, as if a million masons woke up every morning and by hand lay asphalt one grain at a time. People of all colors, ethnicities, creed and social statuses came bearing money, knowledge or experience in order to build their legacies in the new kingdom, sprouting out of the desert.
Dubai had arrived.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“These little black circular shapes were a result of him being a carrier of a parasite known as Toxoplasma gondii”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Love liberates us from all primal urges and it is because of our lack of free will and complete submissiveness that we understand it in its purest form.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“The timepiece had been a birthday gift from Arian, his nineteen-year-old cousin in Tehran. It was plastered with pastoral steel and had the Faravahar hieroglyph sketched on it. This ancient pictogram was the symbol of a guardian angel. A remnant of a primeval daemon designed to protect the Persians. The clock’s circumference was decorated with the flowers of life and in the middle there was a scripture written in cuneiform that read Good Deeds, Good Thoughts & Good Words.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“We are nothing more than a dot amongst the billions of organisms on the Hillis plot”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“People needed proof that Utopia was nothing more than a theory, an illusion read in fictional stories.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Eshgham, a term of endearment meaning my love”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Love was supposed to be the easiest path to divinity”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“The impetus he had gained from the whimsical seraph known as Syoshant had been short-lived”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“They were nothing more than modern day pagan worshippers. Congregants of a religion built on greed and hedonism. The trading floor served as their shrine; the phones as their Holy Grail; and the clients as the prophets who would entitle them to choose between putting the next down payment on a Lamborghini or a Mercedes”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams

“Mercilessness was not a bad trait to have in the corporate universe.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, The Rise of Shams