Amir

"I don't know if Hassan ever looked back at all"

"Baba and I lived in the same house but in different worlds"

"I could run and not look back"

"There is something deeply wrong with me"

"Maybe standing up for the helpless is how you make God happy"

"I looked at my son and saw my shame"

"Hassan never knew about the money and watch"

"I asked him one thing: was the scar all that mattered"

"He was just a boy, like me"

"I never told him I was sorry"

"There is goodness in his eyes"

"I am grateful for the chance to make amends"

"The winter of 1975 was the winter everything changed"

"I wondered if he ever thought of me the way I thought of him"

"I wondered if that's how forgiveness worked in the real world, if it was really just a matter of telling the other person they were forgiven."

"Maybe Hassan was right. Maybe I was just a scared boy."

"I was going to be a father. I was going to be a teacher."

"But I was a liar. And I was a thief."

"The problem with writing about real people is that I'm sure I'm not remembering them the way they were."

"I envied her. Her secret was that she had nothing left to lose."

"He loved the idea of me, not me."

"I thought of Baba, of his final days in a hospital bed."

"Writing about myself and my sins felt almost like a betrayal of my family."

"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frozen winter day in 1975."

"I had one last chance to make things right, to be good again."

"I thought of all the times I had been a coward."

"Maybe we're all monsters. Maybe we're all capable of monstrous things."

"I ran because I was a coward."

"Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life."

"That's what I do, I write my wrongs."