“It is not Love that is the crime and it is not Love that is the sin. It is the absence of it!”ARcher Tariq - "A Rising Darkness”

“In crime and enmity they lie Who sin and tell us love can die, Who say to us in slander's breath That love belongs to sin and death.”

“Darkness is the absence of light. Happiness is the absence of pain. Anger is the absence of joy. Jealousy is the absence of confidence. Love is the absence of doubt. Hate is the absence of peace. Fear is the absence of faith. Life is the absence of death.”

“Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, Laila had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which Tariq's father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq's absence or presence.”

“To be godless is probably the first step to innocence," he said, "to lose the sense of sin and subordination, the false grief for things supposed to be lost."So by innocence you mean not an absence of experience, but an absence of illusions."An absence of need for illusions," he said. "A love of and respect for what is right before your eyes.”

“Tariq tucked the gun into the waist of his denims. Then he said a thing both lovely and terrible. "For you," he said. "I'd kill with it for you, Laila.”