I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But i didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lip. I ran

Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.

I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person's heart

Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how people like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.

They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything