Culture is always about politics in the end.

Basically, being alive means keeping yourself ready for the sky to fall in on you at any time. If you start from the assumption that existence is only an ordeal, a test we have to pass, then you’re equipped to deal with its sorrows and its surprises. If you persist in expecting it to give you something it can’t give, that just proves that you haven’t understood anything. Take things as they come; don’t turn them into a drama. You’re not piloting the ship, you’re following the course of your destiny.

There's nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than your life. And your life isn't more important than other people's lives.

It seems that the whole world is beginning to decay, and that its putrefaction has chosen to spread outward from here, from the land of the Pashtuns, where desertification proceeds at a steady, implacable crawl even in the consciences and intellects of men.

The man who let the love of his life pass him by will end up alone with his regrets and all the sighs in the world won't soothe his soul.

You can know all there is to know about life and mankind, but what do you really know about yourself?

I was depressed. I knew I was lost, but I had no idea how to find myself again. It was as though I was a different person, an infuriating, disappointing yet indispensable person whose body was my only home.