I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

You have these crops of poppies that supply something like 90% of the heroin sold in Europe and actually represents more than half of the Afghanistan's GDP.

Without women taking an active role in Afghan society, rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be very difficult.

and every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.

It's wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.

It is now your duty to hone that talent, because a person who wastes his God-given talents is a donkey.

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.