Eliza Griswold Quotes

Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives.

When I would ask women to tell me landays, and they were comfortable enough to do so, they'd tell me ones that reflected the state of their own lives.

News isn't designed to talk about daily life in its nuances, but poetry is.

Islam doesn't have a monopoly on violence in Africa. And violence plays a particularly critical role in places where statehood is weak at best, such as the Maghreb.

It's important to understand that violent Islam is only one face of violent religion.

Speculation is a fool's game, but I've seen many political projections that look like the Taliban could hold most of the country, and possibly Kabul, within perhaps a short time.

The future of Afghanistan is incredibly dark, and decisions are happening incredibly quickly.

I can't imagine how Afghanistan's fall isn't going to be ten times faster than Iraq's.

Poetry isn't as relevant in the Western world as it is in Afghanistan. And not many people make time for something that doesn't feel relevant.

We know what war means, and we know what poverty means. We need to develop a better model for reaching out to the world than we have.

In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture.

The power of the voice in rap is about the expression of truth, rather than the expression of some kind of artifice.

I worked with two young women translators. One died and the other received a death threat from the Taliban.

Poetry allows me to write about what I don't know, whereas journalism demands a higher level of certainty to be worthy of being written.

I think most good poetry is about suffering; I think that's what underlies the love in these landays pieces - suffering and longing.

You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.

The truth is, terrorism flourishes in places of injustice rather than in places of poverty.