We should remember that the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Of course, many of them did support the Taliban. But you cannot equate all Pashtuns with the Taliban.

The key to breaking the Taliban taboo against women and the cultural brainwashing that the Taliban imposed upon many Afghans is to get women back into the workforce.

There's a sense of desperation in Afghanistan because of the lack of funding and the fact that the U.S. only has a one-track military strategy. It doesn't have an economic and political game plan.

I think within a year or so, perhaps, if 9/11 had not happened, in Afghanistan would have been a very broad-based general uprising against the Taliban.

The idea of a permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, as opposed to an economic presence, is going to create a new wave of hostility toward the United States.

[Mullah Omar] gave himself this religious title. So it was something that all those people there who swore an oath of loyalty to him as a religious leader could not easily get rid of.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

Life is the song you dance to when reality sings.

With every breath i take, I take one for her.

I used to cover my windows in heavy curtains, never drawn. Now I danced in the sunlight on my hardwood floors.

Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.- Lucullus (Act III, scene 1)

If every time the blood is poured out it is poured out for the remission of sins, I ought to receive it always, that my sins may always be forgiven me.

I was never really a career woman. My life always came first.

Love is for fools. It is a surging of blood in the loins ... there is no mystery, and no magic. Find someone else, my boy.

Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.

I lay down the Position, That whatever a Conscience well directed allows us to do for the Advancement of Truth, an erroneous Conscience will warrant for advancing a suppos'd Truth.