"She passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and it accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion."

"Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, she had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which sometimes played old Pashto songs were played, time stretched and contracted depending on his absence or presence."

"I would have told them that he lived a life lacking in purpose or direction. Like those aimless rides I took him on. A life lived from the backseat, observed as it blurred by. An indifferent life."

"I see you've confused what you're learning in school with actual education."

"If there's a God out there, then i would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork."

"She was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than i did the sun for shining on me."

"It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to--worrying that things aren't going to work out."

"To see her, amid all of it. To see that contentment and beauty were not unattainable things."

"Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency."

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."

"Mammy was soon asleep, leaving Laila with dueling emotions: reassured that Mammy meant to live on, stung that she was not the reason. She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed."

"Stories close the gap and reconcile between what we want life to be and how it actually is."

"Who rebels with mathematics?"

"Mother is fading for him, her face receding into shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from a fist."

"What began with exuberance and passion always ended with terse accusations and hateful words, with rage and weeping fits."

"Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly."

"He scarcely knew who was battling whom, who was winning, who was losing, as though he hoped that by doggedly ignoring the war it would return the favor."

"In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things."

"That's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does."

"Her beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head."

"If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing."

"I want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin."

"I know that in the end, God will forgive me. He will forgive your father, me, and you too. I hope you can do the same. Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But most important, forgive yourself."

"Every sinner must be punished in a manner befitting his sin!"

"She wished she could visit Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But she sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far.... Mariam is in her own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns."

"Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam."

"In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them."

"Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie."

"Once, when I was little, I asked her if she'd cried when my father had fallen to his death.At the funeral? I mean, the burial?No, I did not.Because you weren't sad?Because it was nobody's business if I was."

"He knew I betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time."

"My books are about ordinary people, like you, me, people on the street, people who really have an expectation of reasonable happiness in life, want their life to have a sense of security and predictability, who want to belong to something bigger than them, who want love and affection in their life, who want a good future for the children."

"It is a heartBreaking sound, Amir Jan, the Wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you Never hear it."

"He thought about his long life and gave thanks for all the bounty and joy that he had been given. To want more, to wish for yet more, he knew, would be petty. He sighed happily, and listened to the wind sweeping down from the mountains, to the chirping of night birds."

"A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bare to lose."

"Marriage can wait, education cannot."

"Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food."

"I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over those mountains, Kabul still existed. It really existed, not just as an old memory, or as the heading of an AP story on page 15 of the San Francisco Chronicle."

"Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always."

"Nothing came out. Suddenly I was hovering, looking down on myself from above."

"Sad stories make good books."

"James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?"

"But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie."

"I finally had what I'd wantes all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into."

"I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again."

"On a high mountain I stood, And cried the name of Ali, Lion of God.O Ali, Lion of God, King of Men, Bring joy to our sorrowful hearts."

"In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst."

"I wondered when I had forgotten that, despite everything, he was still just a child."

"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years."

"She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor."

"He had the blue kite in his hands, that was the first thing I saw. And I can't lie now and say my eyes didn't scan it for any rips."