Slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.

I think Americans yearn for other alternatives to peace, than the path our government has currently taken, and perhaps why there is great interest in this book, and the message to fight poverty and ignorance with education.

A wise man from my home once told me that these mountains have seen far too much suffering and killing, and that each rock and every boulder you see represents a mujahadeen who died fighting either the Russians or the Taliban. Then the man went on to say that now that the fighting is finished, it is time to build a new era of peace-and the first step in that process is to take up the stones and start turning them into schools.

I say if you fight terrorism, it's based in fear, but if you promote peace, it's based on hope.

Because most of the girls were still in mourning and all of them had lost their textbooks, even pencils and pens, Shaukat Ali began the first classes by reading to them from poetry and religious texts. "Reading, literature, and spirituality are good for the soul," he told them. "So we will start with these studies.

You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change.

By the way, although the subtitle of the book "Three Cups of Tea" is "fighting terror, one school at a time", that was not my choice, as fighting terror is not why I do this, I do it to promote peace, and give hope and opportunity to children deprived of education.