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.

When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history.

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

sometimes the shifting of rocks is deep, deep below, and it's powerful and scary down there, but that all we feel on the surface is a slight tremor. Only a slight tremor.

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

In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity.