A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer. - Khaled Hosseini

But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could — a look, a whisper, a moan — to salvage from perishing to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.

It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.