True redemption is...when guilt leads to good.

All good things in life are fragile and easily lost

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

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

The images [of The Kite Runner grafic] were created in Fabio Celoni's mind. I chose to let him take the lead. Fabio and I did exchange an e-mail or two, but it was my intention to step out of the way and let his artistic instincts take over.

Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how people like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.

War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.