Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.

You have these crops of poppies that supply something like 90% of the heroin sold in Europe and actually represents more than half of the Afghanistan's GDP.

I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.

It is now your duty to hone that talent, because a person who wastes his God-given talents is a donkey.

It's tremendous what can happen when suddenly you make an emotional connection.

I get daily e-mails from Afghans who thank me for writing this book [The Kite Runner], as they feel a slice of their story has been told by one of their own. So, for the most part, I have been overwhelmed with the kindness of my fellow Afghans.

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime.