I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.

I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S.

I feel like we [americans] are a unique nation in this world, in that we are able to implement great change in our society over a relatively short period of time. What takes centuries in Europe, we accomplish in a generation.

But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.

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.

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.

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.