I am saying that you should read everyone else’s story with the same respect as you do your own.

You know, Anvar, people don’t understand these days,” he told me, “the real sacrifice. They think their offering is the money they spend on the animal. Or they think it is the life of the animal. But it isn’t. You are the sacrifice. What you are feeling now? That is your sacrifice. The lives of other creatures are not yours to take. Life is precious and to end one is final. Remember to never take more from the world than you can give back to it.

How you begin things is important. This is true in checkers and in life, because at the beginning of things you are freer than you will ever be again. Once the game starts, every move you make is influenced by what someone else has done. The longer the game goes, the messier the board becomes, the more that influence grows. But the opening, Anvar, belongs to you.

That radical Islamists and “America First” nationalists had essentially the same worldview and the same desire to recapture a nostalgia-gilded past glory was proof, in my opinion, that God’s sense of irony was simply divine.

We don’t take from the world what we can’t give back to it.

All men are created equal. Except not really, because some men are created American. Other men are created rich. Some men are created American and rich and are still not content with the world they inherit, so they try to change it. They try to make it more to their liking by painting it with blood and flame.

Humanity, as a whole, has a lot of practice in dealing with death. Only individuals struggle with it.

I’m just saying, look for the truth. Look past the slogans and the spin and what people say their motivations are. Look at what they are actually trying to do, at the world they really want to create, and once you know the truth about them, if you still want to stand with them, to vote for them, go ahead.

Azza said something that’s been bothering me. She told me that there is no beauty left in this world. She’s not wrong, you know. Sometimes that is how life feels. It’s like there is nothing good, nothing noble, nothing precious left. Everywhere I look there is only pain and struggle and just a shadow over everything. You should know that I never feel that way when I am with you. You’re the light of my world. You make the universe beautiful.

Clocks cannot measure time. They can count seconds, minutes and hours, but those are not accurate measures of our experience of time. A day of hunger is longer than a day when you’ve eaten. How quickly time passes isn’t constant. An hour can stretch out and seem unending. A year can pass you by before you know it.