I don't know whom or what he was defying. [...] [M]aybe the God he had never believed in.

When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But i didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lip. I ran

hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.

the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion

There isn't, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry.

I experienced Kabul with my brother the way Amir and Hassan do: long school days in the summer, kite fighting in the winter time, westerns with John Wayne at Cinema Park, big parties at our house in Wazir Akbar Khan, picnics in Paghman.