Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.

Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it's either before or after they've blown something up.

You say their stories, it is gift they give you.

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

He is annoyed with their lack of interest, their blithe ignorance of the arbitrary genetic lottery that has granted them their privileged lives.

yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism

Soon, he would become an adult. And when he did, there would be not going back because adulthood was akin to what his father had once said about being a war hero: one you became one, you died one.