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

The story of what has happened to women in Afghanistan, however, is a very important one, and fertile ground for fiction.

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.

If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar.

She wished she could visit Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But she sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far.... Mariam is in her own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.

Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.

Regret... when it comes to you, I have oceans of it.