You’re not going to cry, are you? - I am not going to cry! Not over you. Not in a thousand years.

Must have been quite the culture shock, going there.” “Yes it was.” Idris doesn’t say that the real culture shock has been in coming back.

I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.

Panic. You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creak. You order your lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW. But your airways ignore you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly you're breaithing through a drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can manage is a croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked open and a flood of cold sweat spills, drenches your body. You want to scream. You would if you could. Cut you have to breathe to scream. Panic.

J’aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.

The finger cut, to save the hand.

[Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns] is not just unique to books, but films and music.