“As queen, Farah achieved almost immediate popularity. She had several features that pleased the Iranians: she was 'fully Iranian' and also worthy of honour because she descended from the family of the Prophet. She was a brunette with deep black eyes of the kind most Persians cherish. (The Shah's outlandish taste for blondes was not shared by his compatriots.) Farah appeared to be slightly taller than the Shah, but this could not be held against her. The new queen's athletic physique and her well-publicised love of sports disconcerted some religious circles, but even the more conservative Iranians now understood that times were changing.”

“She answered by standing and kissing him first and held his cheeks and closed her eyes and felt sure as bones and deep as blood that she had found her place.”

“Nothing," she said softly. "A queen must possess nothing to rule because she has to give everything she has to her people. Even her life.”

“She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.”

“She had wild eyes, slightly insane. She also carried an overload of compassion that was real enough and which obviously cost her something.”

“When he loved his bride it was not a queen he loved, but rather the girl as she might have been if she had not been destroyed in her childhood.”

“Whether the queen caused the period, or the period creates the queen, she fitted her time perfectly.”

“… counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.”

“She was our queen, our rose, our star;
And then she danced—O Heaven, her dancing!”

“For she would be Queen of Lumatere.

But he would be king to her.”