Leila Aboulela Quotes

With social distancing restrictions in place, many are finding themselves isolated from their support networks and suddenly navigating parenthood differently than they expected.

It's been tough for me being away from the game.

Single parenting is sometimes just a case of sitting around by yourself in mild despair, not knowing what to do.

It was always going to be difficult, no matter what I'd set up, no matter how many children I have got to take my mind off things. There was always going to be a moment when I finished playing, that I was going to find tough.

I became bitter, hard, cold. I was always on a panic - couldn't buy clothes or a good place to live.

Tough times were when I didn't have a job and nobody called me.

I love my husband, and I wanted to support him, but the transition to Washington has been my hardest experience. I felt very lonely and isolated.

For me and Washington, it was like I was in a dark tunnel, and the light was really far away.

Motherhood: if it were going to be easy, it never would have started with something called labor.

I didn't have my mom or my dad or cousins or anybody to guide me. I was around a whole bunch of wolves... I was just like, 'Lord, just guide me and weed these snakes out of my life.'

It can be isolating to be an entrepreneur… you have to keep hustling to make it happen and that can be lonely.

Bringing up children on my own was quite a busy time.

I was a really bad single mum. I used to go to the supermarket just for somewhere to go.

When things aren't going well it can feel like the world is against you and there's nowhere to turn.

I had a hard time going to school. I probably wasn't the most pleasant young person to be around. I kept a very tight circle of trusted people.

It's tough working as a single parent, but I'm lucky enough to have chunks of time when I'm at home and a huge circle of friends and family, although my biggest extravagance is child care.

We may not want to say it out loud, but motherhood is hard.

I talk to the guy who busted his butt all week to buy a color TV, and the woman who's raising her kids, the people I owe a debt to. I'm talking to people in hotel rooms, lonesome people.

I know what it feels like to be broke and alone, and I don't ever want my loved ones to see that or know what it's like.

They put me in solitary confinement, and although I went on to do 8,755 days of solitary in total, the first two were the hardest. I almost went mad, beating my head against the wall.

LA is a harsh city to be in when you're a little girl from the South, and you have absolutely no idea what you're doing and you are thinking, 'Am I making, have I made a massive mistake? I don't have money to move back home. My parents are not on board with this. What do I do?'

I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.

I drank my bottle of milk and ate my morsel of bread somewhere on the outskirts, while I circumspectly studied my environment or else fell to meditating on my own harsh lot.

Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on.

If I had been married earlier in life, I wouldn't have seen the double helix. I would have been taking care of the kids on Saturday. On the other hand, I was lonely a lot of the time.