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

The experience of writing ‘The Kite Runner’ is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.

I think novelists, when they write their books, end up having occasionally serving a purpose and playing roles that they never really fully either intended or even understood.

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

You can not stop you from being who you are.

Whether you do something or decide to do nothing, either way, you are making a moral choice. And I hope people make the right one.

Life just doesn’t care about our aspirations, or sadness. It’s often random, and it’s often stupid and it’s often completely unexpected, and the closures and the epiphanies and revelations we end up receiving from life, begrudgingly, rarely turn out to be the ones we thought.

Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism.

Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock.

It’s tremendous what can happen when suddenly you make an emotional connection.

And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.

She was the trembler of knees, the spiller of teacups.

There is only one sin. and that is theft. When you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.

But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.

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

Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.

True redemption is when guilt leads to good.

You need to give yourself the time to think freely. I don’t know if that is political. But sometimes things are political because you observe things that are right or that are wrong and you want to speak on them.

To experience emotional freedom, we must accept, surrender, and let go of our wounds. We must be willing to take responsibility for what we’re holding on to, which is usually a hurt or pain from the past that leaves us feeling victimized.

Strengthen your mind and refuse to carry the burden of mental and moral weakness acquired in past years; burn them in the fires of your present divine resolutions and right activities. By this constructive attitude you will attain freedom.

People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It’s like that. If you’re going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.

There is an appropriate way to use your story, not as an excuse but as a testimony to God’s ability to free you from the past.

I see my parents as tiny children who need love. I have compassion for my parents’ childhoods. I now know that I chose them because they were perfect for what I had to learn. I forgive them and set them free, and I set myself free.

When the mind is strong and the heart is pure, you are free.

Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.