“I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.”

I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.

And every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.

I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.

And every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.

And every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.

Hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.

Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.

I’m gladly doing my own thing for the time being.

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

People say that eyes are windows to the soul.

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

A pathetic shadow, torn between her envy and thrill of being seen with Masomma, sharing in the attention as a weed would, lapping up water meant for the lily upstream.

Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.

It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.

When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.

I believe that most successful people are ordinary people with extraordinary determination.

People always say be humble, live humble, and stay humble. When was the last time somebody told you to be great, to be amazing, to be extraordinary?

True art awakens the Extraordinary Ovation.

Any love involves loss, and that’s the risk you take. And the greater the love, the greater the loss. I certainly feel that now with the woman I’m with, and the children that I have. But whatever the course may be, this time together is extraordinary.

Fatherhood is the best thing I ever did. It changes your perspective. You can write a book, you can make a movie, you can paint a painting, but having kids is really the most extraordinary thing I have taken on.

Only a prisoner who has been confined for long behind high walk can appreciate the extraordinary psychological value of these outside walks and open views.