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"I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over those mountains, Kabul still existed. It really existed, not just as an old memory, or as the heading of an AP story on page 15 of the San Francisco Chronicle."
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"It would be an existence rife with difficulties... but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heirloom."
Life
"I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again."
Self
"Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors."
Family
"He used to wonder how such a frail little body could house so much joy, so much goodness. It couldn't. It spilled out of her, came pouring out her eyes."
Emotion
"A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché."
Art
"She remembered all too well how time had dragged without him, how she had shuffled about feeling waylaid, out of balance. How she could ever cope with his permanent absence?"
Reflection
"They rarely look at Baba -- the teenagers -- and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him."
Life
"Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency was but one."
Family
"That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms."
Literature
"I'm all you have in this world Mariam, and when I'm gone you'll have nothing. You ARE nothing!"
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"Ah! Beautiful Paris! Where smiles bloom on stone."
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Personal Development
"Don't talk about heaven if you've never been to Bali."
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Personal Development
"The traveler knows the grace of travel."
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Personal Development
"Without travels, our existence, our memories, our literature, our dreams, our everything would be very poor, very boring, very limited!"
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Personal Development
"Everywhere, I am welcome, I will stay there."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see."
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Personal Development
"This is flight 121 to Los Angeles. If your travel plans today do not include Los Angeles, now would be the perfect time to disembark."
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Personal Development
"Beautiful places are almost alive! When you visit them, you can feel their breaths!"
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Personal Development
"London is a roost for every bird."
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Personal Development
"I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."
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Personal Development
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