"How many senators have taken their conception of what America can do from what they’ve seen on the American movie screen?"

"Yes, they mean well, but the only good that an absence of malice guarantees is a clear conscience."

"Afghanistan doesn’t have the oil of the Khazars, he said, and we’re not ready to prostitute our women like the Thais. Unlike the Westerner’s, ours is not a spiritual poverty but a material one. When our needs in that area are met, we will not have the dilemma or crisis of Western man."

"To go from America’s founding belief that it can form an ever more perfect union to a belief that it can reconstruct another country in the image of its hopes for itself – to cover that distance – does not take long."

"Afghanistan’s barren, ragged desolation moaned a long dirge of ancient wonder, the earth’s broken features ready to receive fallen horsemen, the lost traveller, and all the butchered tribes."

"This is a miserable country, Zafar. I don’t need to explain that to you. It needs help. Isn’t it that simple?Is anything that simple?"