The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. “You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

“A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”

And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.”

it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

time can be a greedy thing—sometimes it steals all the details for itself.

“She said, ‘I’m so afraid.’ And I said, ‘Why?,’ and she said, ‘Because I’m so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you,’