I'm trying to see my own country with fresh eyes.

As the only woman, I was able to sit with the officers in front, with a glass of vodka in one hand and a cucumber in the other. That's how I went to my first war.

I would like my book to give people insight to the war before and after, but I don't think anyone could read my book and suddenly make up her mind about the war. I want to write for everybody.

We don't grow up in vacuums. We grow up in societies.

I was thinking, there are 5 million people, and I am just one of those 5 million. In the build-up to the war you see children playing in the street, and you think, ah, I'm going to be okay.

We have believing in this innocent feeling of nothing will ever happen to us, because all catastrophes always broad and happening to anyone else.

When I decided to stay in Iraq, I decided to take the fear out of my body and put it into a freezer.

If we can't understand the Afghan family, we can't understand Afghanistan.

If I leave, reality will devour me. Then they will all really be dead.

As a woman, you accept the situation, adapt to it, and do your best, whereas men would choose violence.

If I lose, then I have to accept that my way of writing books is not the way society says it's okay to write.

Hope is the easiest thing that turn into dust.

I've always been drawn to solitude, felt a kind of luxurious relief in its self-generated pace and rhythms.

Man's will and God's grace rise and fall together

My stuff is my stuff. Sometimes it's not as successful as some of the other stuff. But it's my stuff.

Better to work and fail than to sleep one's life away.

They who see only what they wish to see in those around them are very fortunate.

Smile creates love and peace; love and peace create smile.

To revive sorrow is cruel.

It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible.

I think the voice can carry a story.