There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.

If the story had been about anyone else, it would been dismissed as laaf, that Afghan tendency to exaggerate ---sadly, almost a national affliction; if someone bragged that his son was a doctor, chances were the kid had once passed a biology test in high school.

A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.

There [in The Kite Runner] certainly are, as is always the case with fiction, autobiographical elements woven through the narrative.

Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history.

If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.

In her smile, Idris sees how little of the world he has known, even at thirty-five years of age, its savageness, its cruelty, its boundless brutality.