The things that have always drawn me to the craft of writing is character, it's story, it's something that becomes like a pebble in my shoe, a voice that I just can't get rid of, and I've got to see it through.

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything

Zindagi migzara (life goes on)

Tariq tucked the gun into the waist of his denims. Then he said a thing both lovely and terrible. "For you," he said. "I'd kill with it for you, Laila.

Literature and film have a way of lifting you from your own existence and transporting you to some foreign place and putting you in the shoes with an experience different than your own.

Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks.

[Barack Obama] is sending more troops [to Afghanistan], but they have also realized that we are not going to win that war through guns and tanks. We have to engage the neighbors, and it is good that there is a non-military strategy in addition to a military strategy. It is, at least, encouraging. Whether it will work or not, the jury is still put.