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.

The cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet - they all begin to blur. I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to.

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

Don't be afraid to tell the truth. It's better to hurt someone by truth than to make them happy by lies.

After all, life is not a Hindi movie.

you say you have no courage, but i see it in you. what you did, the burden you agreed to shoulder, took courage. for that, i honor you.

You are never alone in Afghanistan. You are always in the company of others, usually family. You don't understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. Family is so central to your identity, to how you make sense of your world, it is very dramatic, and therefore an amazing source of storytelling, a source of fiction for me.