I've read that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your own demise.

You have extreme poverty and high crime and you have to admit that the governance of the Kabul regime has been poor and has been losing its popular legitimacy. You have a corrupt police force, not to mention homelessness, joblessness. The problems are huge.

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

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. So what I know about writing, I know from my own instincts, and whatever the narrative voice is in my own head.

Human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.

And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.

You can not stop you from being who you are.