We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.

Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads).

It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names.

You're gutless. It's how you were made. And that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you've never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is... God help him.

When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.

If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.

I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.