""In mind's special processes, a ten-mile run takes far longer than the 60 minutes reported by a grandfather clock. Such time, in fact, hardly exists at all in the real world; it is all out on the trail somewhere, and you only go back to it when you are out there.""
— John L. Parker (Once a Runner: A Novel)

"Running to him was real; the way he did it the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as a diamond; it made him weary behond comprehension. But it also made him free."
— John L. Parker, Jr.

"'And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say, they think everyone else does too.'"
— Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

"''It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight.
But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.''
"
— Khaled Hosseini

"If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thous didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting."
— Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

"For you, a thousand times over."
— Khaled Hosseini

"For you, a thousand times over."
— Khaled Hosseini