Laila

"You'll see, Mariam. It won't always be this way."

"I am tired of being a prisoner in this house."

"Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie."

"Love and loyalty, that is all that matters."

"I have told myself to stop asking why and just to accept that this is my life."

"You're like a mountain here, Mariam. This place wouldn't exist without you."

"I wish you wouldn't say things like that. It makes me sad."

"I didn't know that the world could be so dark."

"We're going to get out of here, Mariam. I promise."

"Maybe all of us have things we despise about ourselves. Maybe we all wish we could be other than what we are."

"I will not be a slave in my own home."

"She would walk the streets of this city as a woman unchained."

"The war had taken many things from her, but it could not take her will."

"She would not let the past steal her future."

"The streets of Kabul held her story, and she would return to tell it."

"We are bound by circumstance and custom, but not by our choices."

"Sometimes kindness is the only weapon we have left."

"We are taught to be silent, but silence itself is a form of violence."

"We dream of escape, but sometimes our greatest freedom comes from accepting what we cannot change."

"In the face of tyranny, small acts of defiance become revolutionary."

"A child's laughter is the only prayer some mothers dare offer."

"Betrayal cuts deepest when it comes from those we trusted most."

"A woman's voice, when finally raised, has the power to move mountains."

"We are raised to believe our worth lies only in pleasing men."

"We endure not because we are weak, but because we are resilient."

"We are not defined by the violence done to us, but by how we choose to live after it."

"True strength is not the absence of tears, but the ability to shed them and continue forward."

"A single moment of genuine human connection can sustain us through years of solitude."

"I cannot take this anymore. This life, this cold, heartless life."

"I am not a practicing Muslim, but I am a Muslim."