“Even in the palmiest days of the Khalsa it is astonishing how small a proportion of the Punjab population was of the Sikh profession. The fierce fanaticism of the earlier years of the century was succeeded by the unequalled military organisation ofthe Maharaja, and these together enabled a people who were never numerically more than a sect of Hinduism to overrun the whole Punjab and Kashmir, to beat back the Afghans to the mountains, and tofound a powerful kingdom in which they were outnumbered by Hindus and Muhammadans by ten to one.”

“Existence was bigger than just life. It was everyone's life all together, and even if you lived in Buffalo, New York and had never been more than ten miles from home, you were part of the puzzle, too. It didn't matter how small your life was.”

“The public is a host, more numerous than all the peoples together, but it is a body which can never be reviewed, it cannot even be represented, because it is an abstraction. Nevertheless, when the age is reflective and passionless and destroys everything concrete, the public becomes everything and is supposed to include everything. And that again shows how the individual is thrown back upon himself.”

“...if we accept contemporary literature as sufficient evidence, the society of Paris today is fully as corrupt as that of the Punjab in 1830; and the bazaars of Lahore, while Ranjit Singh was celebrating the festival of the Holi,were not so shameless as Piccadilly at night in 1892.”

“The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980s: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules.”

“Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.”