Amir

"I could be good to him now."

"Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I bought with a rug."

"I opened my mouth and almost told her everything. But I didn't."

"I wanted to tell Baba that he was wrong, that whatever I was, he had made me that way."

"I never told anyone what I saw that day."

"I could step into that sunny day and wash myself clean."

"Maybe we are all just waiting for a chance at redemption, a chance to be good again."

"I was going to get my childhood back. The smile on my face felt strange, unfamiliar."

"I envied Hassan. Envied him so much it frightened me."

"There is no monster, just a beautiful boy."

"I kept replaying the scene, over and over, before my eyes like the rerun of an old television broadcast."

"I did not know what to say, so I said nothing."

"People shouldn't be allowed to get away with things just because they don't get caught."

"The Afghanistan I knew was gone."

"I thought about Hassan. Thought about his face."

"I kept replaying it, and each time, I wished I'd done something different."

"We could finally be brothers again."

"I thought perhaps we could find some way to be brothers again."

"I wondered what it meant, and in what language you could speak to God."

"I wondered if that was redemption, then. Not beauty, not peace, but the absence of longing."

"The distance between Kabul and America had taken everything from me."

"I ran because I was a coward."

"He deserved more than what I had become."

"Baba's sins were my sins."

"I thought of the life we could have had together."

"Perhaps there was some good left in me after all."

"I was haunted by a ghostly image of an Afghan boy."

"There is a way to be good again, and I knew what it was."

"Soraya deserved a man who had not done what I had done."

"I have a sin upon my soul."