but there's no nation uncorrupted. there's no system that's immune to the misuse of money.

I was free. Every day, when you're on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending.

The tears, when they come to some men, are worse than beatings. They're wounded worse by sobbing, men like that, than they are by boots and batons. Tears begin in the heart, but some of us deny the heart so often, and for so long, that when it speaks we hear not one but a hundred sorrows in the heartbreak. We know that crying is a good and natural thing. We know that crying isn't a weakness, but a kind of strength. Still, the weeping rips us root by tangled root from the earth, and we crash like fallen trees when we cry.

Once you love something, you can never stop loving it. Even after a divorce, the heart will not stop loving.

Good soldiers are defined by what they can endure, not by what they can inflict.

The voice, Afghan matchmakers say, is more than half of love.

Anything that can be put in a nut shell should remain there.