about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.

It so happens that the major relationships in the novel [The Kite Runner] are between men, dictated not by any sort of prejudice or discomfort with female characters, but rather by the demands of the narrative.

A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.

Sometimes, Soraya Sleeping next to me, I lay in bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And I could almost feel the emptiness in Soraya's womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our love-making. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I'd feel it rising from Soraya and setting between us. Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child.

You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.

Give sustenance, Allah. Give sustenance to me.

And one more thing...You will never again refer to him as 'Hazara boy' in my presence. He has a name and it's Sohrab.