“What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.”

Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.

Some stories don’t need telling.

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

All good things in life are fragile and easily lost.

I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.

War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.

She said, ‘I’m so afraid.’ And I said, ‘why?,’ and she said, ‘Because I’m so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you.

A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.

And that, is the story of our country, one invasion after another Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we’re like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.

I finally had what I’d wanted all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose.

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

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything

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.

Afghanistan has always been sort of a fractured nation, very tribal, where the countryside and the distant provinces have been run by custom, by tribal law and by tribal leaders rather than edicts from the central government in Kabul.

Time is by my side I’m not running forward for time is not behind.

I loved you with all my heart turns out a whole for some is barely apart.

The ‘kind’ in mankind. Show me that.

Ripples in the water slowly fade away they make way for the larger waves that stay.

I want to go, look for my essence, know myself and change myself; because nobody is constant.

Time is all we have and don’t.

My flowers rot beneath my bed. I was too selfish to part with them. I hope their deaths don’t bring hexes. Did I say flowers? I meant my exes.

He says your poems whisper too loudly of ugly truths. He forgets he authors the endings.