“Marriage can wait, education cannot.”

“‎I know you're still young but I want you to understand and learn this now. Marriage can wait, education cannot. You're a very very bright girl. Truly you are. You can be anything you want Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated Laila. No chance.”

“To be so bent on Marriage - to pursue a man merely for the sake of situation - is a sort of thing that shocks me; I cannot understand it. Poverty is a great Evil, but to a woman of Education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.”

“A woman who can read can educate herself. A woman who cannot knows only what she is told.”

“Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.”

“One cannot try marriage. Once one is in, there is no way out.”