Poetry allows me to write about what I don't know, whereas journalism demands a higher level of certainty to be worthy of being written.

It's important to understand that violent Islam is only one face of violent religion.

News isn't designed to talk about daily life in its nuances, but poetry is.

One of the things about landays is that they thrive in a modern context. Early on I went to this incredible Pashtun novelist, Mustafa Salik, who is a bestselling novelist in Afghanistan and works for the BBC in Pashto. With the question of the sanctity of the poems in mind, I asked him, "Aren't you worried? They've been posted on Facebook and such." And he said, "Just the opposite. This is a folk form; they survive and thrive as people share them."

Poetry isn't as relevant in the Western world as it is in Afghanistan. And not many people make time for something that doesn't feel relevant.

The power of the voice in rap is about the expression of truth, rather than the expression of some kind of artifice.

I can't imagine how Afghanistan's fall isn't going to be ten times faster than Iraq's.