She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

By then The Kite Runner had become quite successful and I found myself in a position that I had always dreamed of my whole life, which was to write for a living.

She was an extraordinary woman, and I went to bed that night feeling like I was perhaps more than ordinary myself. This was the effect she had on me.

What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.

And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.

and yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.

There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again. I was entirely absorbed in that world as I wrote the book [The Kite Runner] and to see the final page of that manuscript whir out of the printer was a very special feeling indeed.