The Kite Runner

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

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

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

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

"Baba's sins were my sins."

"He deserved more than what I had become."

"I ran because I was a coward."

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

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

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

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

"We could finally be brothers again."

"My suspicions about Amir were not wrong."

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

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

"The Afghanistan I knew was gone."

"Love and loyalty are not two different things."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"For you, a thousand times over."

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

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

"A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything."

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