Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.

I found a sad little fairy Beneath the shade of a paper tree. I know a sad little fairy Who was blown away by the wind one night.

He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.

It's wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.

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

The past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion

Sad stories make good books

There was so much goodness in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved any of it.

Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

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.

The finger cut, to save the hand.

I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.

Kabul is... a thousand tragedies per square mile.

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

Attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.

They tell me I must wade into waters, where I will soon drown. Before I march in, I leave this on the shore for you. I pray you find it, sister, so you will know what was in my heart as I went under.

Life is a train, get on board.

Tariq tucked the gun into the waist of his denims. Then he said a thing both lovely and terrible. "For you," he said. "I'd kill with it for you, Laila.

Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism

The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around your neck.

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.

It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.

You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.

But the game involves only male names. Because, if it's a girl, Laila has already named her