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.

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.

I always try to describe the situation just as it is. I try to find sentences that I believe tell the story best. Even my articles are more literary than ordinary news stories.

Lead's erasing then vanishingBanished from whatever it is they're drinking and it's cleanedRunning from the pitcher as if it's her fantasy

It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.

I think there's this great disconnect between youth culture and politics, which is a product of how our capitalist system works.

I love to be surprised or challenged or told that I know less than I thought that I knew. I know it's an old saw, but the older I get the less I know I know.

Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

If you are a writer/director, the [movie] characters are a part of yourself.

I shuddered to think how completely the insane were in the power of their keepers, and how one could weep and plead for release, and all of no avail, if the keepers were so minded.

When I moved to New York, I was still in the closet.

Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer.

The truth of an upright man must be accepted on his own terms. Moreover, since natures vary, we must agree that all the beauties of human excellence may be fostered by faiths that we do not share.