Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it's either before or after they've blown something up.

What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.

If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar.

All my life, I'd been around men. That night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman.

and yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.

I wanted to write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan history.

she held her breath, and in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second she didn’t breathe, God would grant her another day