I grew up with some kind of storytelling instinct, and when I write, my default setting is to find a story and then to tell it. It's the only way I know how to write.

At least, it is encouraging to me that President [Barack] Obama has put Afghanistan front and center in this broader so-called War on terror, and that he is taking a different approach to Afghanistan.

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

You changed the subject." "From what?" "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." "You know." "Know what?" "That I only have eyes for you." Laila swooned inside. She tried to read his face but was met by a look that was indecipherable: the cheerful, cretinous grin at odds with the narrow, half desperate look in his eyes. A clever look, calculated to fall precisely at the midpoint between mockery and sincerity

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal.

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime.