“Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.”

“She was simply Asha, a woman on her own. Had the situation been otherwise, she might not have come to know her own brain.”

“One of his private vanities was that all the garbage sorting had endowed his hands with killing strengththat he could chop a brick in half like Bruce Lee. So lets get a brick, replied a girl with w...”

“Zehrunisa didnt know Abduls age herself. Seventeen was what shed said before the burning, when people asked her, but he could have been twenty-seven, for all she knew. You didnt keep track of a chi...”

“I've said it before and I'll say it again: Never trust anyone who tells you how people come to trust him.”

“But something he'd come to realize on the roof, leaning out, thinking about what would happen if he leaned too far, was that a boy's life could still matter to himself.”

“Education doesnt make you happy. Nor does freedom. We dont become happy just because were free if we are. Or because weve been educated if we have. But because education may be the means by which...”

“Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of bei...”

“The past has no power over the present moment.”

“I love money because money is power, the power to invite my friends for lunch and pay the bill without expecting anything in return, the power to give twenty dollars to beggar just because I can, t...”

“I had been thinking about becoming a business owner for some time, but I didn't have the confidence to pursue it. My parents encouraged the idea, and I had scoffed at them irritably. I wanted the j...”

“The world will know peace when the entrepreneur fully masters the art of starving the politician.”

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

“Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.”

“Immer wieder behauptete Unwahrheiten werden nicht zu Wahrheiten, sondern, was schlimmer ist, zu Gewohnheiten.”