And the Mountains Echoed

by Khaled Hosseini

And though he never says so, Pari knows it is to save her the awkwardness of a ceremony at which she would be alone, with no family to sit in the aisles, no one to give her away, no one to shed a happy tear on her behalf.

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really what guides them is what they’re afraid of. What they don’t want.”