Every woman needed a husband, even if he did silence the song in her.

There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.

For many people in the west, Afghanistan is synonymous with the Soviet war and the Taliban. I wanted to remind people that Afghans had managed to live in peaceful anonymity for decades, that the history of the Afghans in the twentieth century has been largely pacific and harmonious.

You don't order someone to polish your shoes one day and call them 'sister' the next.

I don't know whom or what he was defying. [...] [M]aybe the God he had never believed in.

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

I have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader.