I am wrapped in dismal thinking.
Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock. And
it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.
Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts, and insights, and feelings. But every person is crippled in his or her own way by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world.
It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime.
You are never alone in Afghanistan. You are always in the company of others, usually family. You don't understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. Family is so central to your identity, to how you make sense of your world, it is very dramatic, and therefore an amazing source of storytelling, a source of fiction for me.
You have to find hope. Hope is such a shape shifter. You tend to look in the rearview mirror for hope, but when its gone, you have to look forward. You have to get in the van and keep driving on.
People just make stupid mistakes. And they keep making them and keep making them, and suddenly they can't dig themselves out.
Abraham Lincoln because he was a man filled with great compassion who believed that all men are created free and equal, and was not afraid to stand on that platform. The way Lincoln lived his life has served me well in mine.
Like some kind of strange vacuum cleaner I tried to console him. I recited the same old litanies that you say to people when you try to help their broken hearts, but words can't help at all. It's just the sound of another human voice that makes the only difference. There's nothing you're ever going to say that's going to make anybody happy when they're feeling shitty about losing somebody that they love.