It's tremendous what can happen when suddenly you make an emotional connection.

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

A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything.

We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.

Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.

There was so much goodness in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved any of it.

Kabul was a thriving cosmopolitan city with its vibrant artistic, intellectual and cultural life. There were poets, musicians, and writers. There was also an influx of western culture, art, and literature in the '60s and '70s.