That's how children deal with terror, they fall asleep.

Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock. And

The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.

When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

There isn't, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry.