“Sad understanding is what compassion means - I resign from the attempt to be happy. It’s all discrimination anyway, you value this and devalue that and go up and down but if you were like the void you’d only stare into space and in that space though you’d see stiffnecked people in their favorite various displaytory and armors sniffing and miffed on benches of this one-same-ferry-boat to the other shore you’d still be staring into space for form is emptiness, and emptiness is form - O golden eternity, these simperers in your show of things, take them and slave them to your truth that is forever true forever - forgive me my human floppings - I think therefore I die - I think therefore I am born - Let me be void still - Like a happy child lost in a sudden dream and when his buddy addresses him he doesnt hear, his buddy nudges him he doesnt move; finally seeing the purity and truth of his trance the buddy watches in wonder - you can never be that pure again, and jump out of such trances with a happy gleam of love, being an angel in the dream.”
Source: Desolation Angels
“My greatest philosophy sprouted in my darkest hour.”
“Every child born in Afghanistan is a child who comes into life a victim of war. And every parent too often puts those they love most to sleep with the uncertainty that one or all may not rise to the shards of peeping pink light again.”
Source: Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule
“Then there is the callous side, the war-wracked sentiment, the notion that a Band-Aid was ripped from the bullet wound. The fear for what comes next, the longing many Afghans have to leave, the unraveling humanitarian catastrophe, the hunger pains fused with the ache of abandonment.”
Source: Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule
“Somehow, we must let go of the past and remember it at the same time. We must embrace the reality that is, not the reality we want to be, and do what we can to be a helping hand.”
Source: Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule
“We can pontificate all day about statistics and percentages and death tolls and displacement numbers, easily forgetting that numbers have names and names have faces. Each face has wrinkles that make up a map filled with tragedies to tell.”
Source: Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule
“Little girls smile through their sadness, women weep, and hunger burns through the hollow lives of those who plead for someone, anyone, to listen to their misery.”
Source: Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule
“What would you do if rockets barraged your home and you had nowhere to hide? What would you take if you only had ten seconds to fill a plastic bag? Where would you go if every street you turned onto was filled with fighters? Who would you save if all your children were buried beneath the rubble and crying?”
Source: Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule
“Children still fly kites from high on the hilltop, shrieking in delight as the nylon floats off toward the sunshine as if it was the most magnificent thrill in the world. All I can think to say, hoping those small boys could hear me, is 'fly on.”
Source: Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule
“I think of an Afghan driver I once had, a medical student who spoke whimsically of the homeland he loved so dearly but so badly wanted to leave. 'We Afghans are unlucky people,' the driver had whispered. "But we would be the luckiest people if the wars ever left—look outside at this magical place.”
Source: Afghanistan: The End of the U.S. Footprint and the Rise of the Taliban Rule