There is nothing I would change - to change it I would have had to write a totally different book.

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.

A woman might save him from a heart attack, but she'll kill him in every other way.

Thoughts and feelings change sometimes, as one crosses the frontiers.

Secrets are an exalted state, almost a dream state. They're a way of arresting motion, stopping the world so we can see ourselves in it.

I think if there's a great depression there might be some hope.

The top golfers in the world are like Formula One cars when it comes to their swings.

He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself.

If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I'm haunted by it.

Never throw stones if you think they're going to come back and hit you.

In marketing, the familiar is everything.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness.