Amir’s guilt - Ch.1,
“I became what I am today at the age of twelve”
“Because the past claws its way out”
“I realise I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years”
“It was my past of unatoned sins”
“Hassan never denied me anything”
“I was overcome with such sudden guilt that I bolted to the bathroom and vomited in the sink”
Amir and Hassan go to cinema - Ch.2
“Later, in the dark …‘He took you for someone else,’ I whispered.”
Hassan’s Heritage as a Hazara - Ch.2, Ch.4, Ch.7
“School textbooks barely mentioned them and referred to their ancestry only in passing”
“An entire chapter dedicated to Hassan’s people!”
“Pashtuns had ‘quelled them with unspeakable violence’”
“Hazaras mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys”
“‘passing themselves as martyrs,’ He wrinkled his nose when he said the word Shi’a, like it was some kind of disease” - teacher
“I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing”
“What does he know that illiterate Hazara? He’ll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticise you?”
“A loyal Hazara, Loyal as a dog”
“It’s just a Hazara”
Amir, Hassan and Baba’s relationship as father/son - Ch.3, Ch.4. Ch.5, Ch.9, Ch.10, Ch.13, Ch.25
“I wanted Baba all to myself”
“he patted Hassan on the back. Even put his arm around his shoulder”
“I was glad to, because then everyone would see that he was my father, my Baba”
“I was so proud of Baba, of us”
“With me as an exception Baba moulded the world around him to his liking”
“I wish they’d all died along with their parents”
“I always felt like Baba hated me a little. And why not? After all, I had killed his beloved wife”
“Children aren’t colouring books. You don’t get to fill them in with ur favourite colours.” - RK
“A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up for anything” - B
“If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes. I’d never believe he’s my son.” - B
“After all, didn’t all fathers in their secret hearts harbour a desire to kill their sons?”
“Most days I worshipped Baba with an intensity approaching the religious”
“I wished I could drain his cursed blood from my body.”
“I was overcome with such sudden guilt that I bolted to the bathroom and vomited in the sink”
“I wished I too had some kind of scar that would beget Baba’s sympathy.”
“And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of my life, seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last.”
“My key to Baba’s heart”
“if Baba could forgive that, then why couldn’t he forgive me for not being the son he’d always wanted?”
“I wish Hassan had been with us today.” - B
“Amir jan is my only son . . . my only child, and he has been a good son to me.” - B
“I had been the entitled half, the society-approved, legitimate half, the unwitting embodiment of Baba’s guilt.”
“Baba’s other half. The unentitled, unprivileged half. The half who had inherited what had been pure and noble in Baba. The half that, maybe, in the most secret recesses of his heart Baba had thought of as his true son.”
Amir and Hassan reading book and Hassan’s critiques - Ch.4
“I’d tease him, expose his ignorance”
“You’re a prince Hassan. You’re a prince and I love you.”
“Taught by Hassan of all people. Hassan who couldn’t read and had never written a single word in his life.”
“What does he know that illiterate Hazara? He’ll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticise you?”
Amir and Hassan meeting Assef, and Hassan defending Amir - Ch.5
“Assef might not be entirely sane”
“if they had let Hitler finish what he had started, the world would be a better place” - Ass
“We are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans.” - Ass
“His people pollute out homeland, our watan.” - Ass
“Afghanistan for Pashtuns, I say. That’s my vision” - Ass
“Hassan held the slingshot pointed directly at Assef’s face.”
“I wondered briefly what it must be like to live with such an ingrained sense of one’s hierarchy.”
“they’ll have to change your nickname from Assef the ‘Ear Eater’ to ‘One-Eyed Assef” - H
Kite Running Tournament - Ch.7
“And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of my life, seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last.”
“For you a thousand times over!” - H
“My key to Baba’s heart”
Hassan’s Rape - Ch.7
“they’d cornered him like some kind of wild animal that only Assef could tame”
“nothing is free in this world in this world, and my pardon comes with a small price” - Ass
“A loyal Hazara, Loyal as a dog” - Ass
“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out different if I had. But I didn’t. I just watched. Paralysed.”
“I’ll let you keep it so it will always remind you of what I’m about to do.” - Ass
“there’s nothing sinful about teaching a lesson to a disrespectful donkey” - Ass
“It’s just a Hazara” - Ass
“Hassan didn’t struggle. Didn’t even whimper. He moved his head slightly and I caught a glimpse of his face. Saw the resignation in it. It was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb”
“I imagine the animal sees that its imminent demise is for a higher purpose”
“Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the price I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price?”
“He had the blue kite in his hands; that was the firs ting I saw.”
“I was glad I didn’t have to return his gaze… Or, God forbid, what I feared most: guiltless devotion?”
Aftermath of the rape, Amir wanting to get rid of Hassan and Baba not allowing it - Ch.8
“There was a monster in the lake. It had grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I was that monster.”
“I want you to stop harassing me. I want you to go away.”
“You bring me shame. And Hassan . . . Hassan’s not going anywhere, do you understand?” - B
“He’s staying right here with us, where he belongs. This is his home and we’re his family. Don’t you ever ask me that question again?” - B
Amir and Hassan’s pomegranate moment - Ch.8
“I hurled the pomegranate at him. It struck him in the chest, exploded in a spray of red pulp. Hassan’s cry was pregnant with surprise and pain.’
“‘Hit me back, goddamn you!’ I wished he would. I wished he’d give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I’d finally sleep at night.”
“Hassan was smeared in red like he’d been shot by a firing squad.”
Amir framing Hassan and getting rid of Hassan and Ali - Ch.9
“One of us had to go.”
“I lifted Hassan’s mattress and planted my new watch and a handful of Afghani bills under it.”
“I wondered how and when I’d become capable of causing this kind of pain.”
“This was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me.”
“He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.”
“if Baba could forgive that, then why couldn’t he forgive me for not being the son he’d always wanted?”
“I understood the depth of pain I had caused, the blackness of the grief I had brought onto everyone”
Baba stopping russian soldier from raping women in truck - Ch.10
“It’s his price for letting us past” - Karim
“he says every price has a tax”
“War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.” - B
“I’ll take a thousand bullets before I let this indecency take place.” - B
Journey to America, and Kamal’s dad’s suicide - Ch.10
“He kissed the dirt. Poured it into the box. Stowed the box in his breast pocket, next to his heart”
“I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of colour on the grey, barren canvas that our lived has become.”
“They made me sad for Baba. After everything he’d built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life: one disappointing son and two suitcases.”
“Kamal’s lifeless body lay on his father’s lap.”
“Kamal’s father shoved the barrel in his own mouth”
Baba not adjusting to America - Ch.11
“Baba loved the idea of America. It was living in America that gave him an ulcer.”
“But the Bay Area’s smog stung his eyes, the traffic noise gave him headaches, and the pollen made him cough.”
“Baba was like the widower who remarries but can’t let go of his dead wife.”
“For me America was a place to bury my memories. For Baba a place to mourn his.”
“one of his greatest fears: that an Afghan would see him buying food with charity money.”
Soraya and Afghan gender standards - Ch.10, Ch.12, Ch.13, Ch.14, Ch.25
“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir.”- B
“I was fully aware of the Afghan double standard that favoured my gender.”
“I cringed a little at the position of power I’d been granted, and all because I had won at the genetic lottery that had determined my sex.”
“she never sing in public had been one of the general’s conditions when they had married.”
“Every woman needed a husband. Even if he did silence the song in her.”
“I make one mistake and suddenly everyone is talking nang and namoos.” - Soraya
“I wondered why I wad different. Maybe it was because I had been raised by men; I hadn’t grown up around women and had never been exposed firsthand to the double standard with which Afghan society sometimes treated them”
“I had glimpse of the mother she might have been, had her own womb had not betrayed her.”
Soraya teaching servant how to read - Ch.12
“I asked her if she’d like to learn to read and write” - Soraya
“She started calling me Moalem Soraya, Teacher Soraya.” - Soraya
“I thought of how I had used my literacy to ridicule Hassan. How I had teased him about big words he didn’t know.”
Baba’s illness and death - Ch.12, Ch.13
“and asked for kindness from a God I wasn’t sure existed.”
“I don’t care where he’s been, he’s Roussi,” Baba said, grimacing like it was a dirty word.” - B
“Sometimes I think the only thing he loved more than his late wife was his Afghanistan his late country.”
“But no chemo medication for me.”- B
“All those years, that’s what I was trying to teach you, how to never have to ask that question.”- B
“I didn’t know what or whom he was defying. Me? Dr. Armani? Or maybe the God he had never believed in.”
“I felt a wetness on my knees. Saw Baba’s bladder had let go. Shhh, Baba jan, I’m here.”
“‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘There is no pain tonight.’”
“Baba had wrestled bears his whole life. Losing his young wife. Raising his son by himself. Leaving his beloved homeland, his watan. Poverty. Indignity. In the end, a bear had come that he couldn’t best. But even then, he had lost on his own terms.”
Amir and Soraya’s marriage and backstory - Ch.12, Ch.13
“one last fatherly duty”
“All the Afghans in Virginia were talking about it.”
“How could I, of all people, chastise someone for their past?”
“I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth and almost told her how I’d betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed a forty-year relationship between Baba and Ali.”
“Amir jan is my only son . . . my only child, and he has been a good son to me.”- B
“someone, somewhere, had decided to deny me fatherhood for the things I had done. Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so.”
Amir returning to Afghanistan and meeting Rahim Kahn - Ch.15, Ch.16
“They destroyed your father’s orphanage” - RK
“Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?” - RK
“Those thorny old barbs of guilt bore into me once more, as if speaking his name had broken a spell, set them free to torment me anew.”
“What will he think when he comes back to Kabul after the war and finds that I have assumed his place in the house?” - H
“she was home now, he said, home with her family.”
“Our ears became accustomed to the whistle of falling shells, to the rumble of gunfire, our eyes familiar with the sight of men digging bodies out of piles of rubble.” - RK
“proverbial hell on earth” - RK
“Hassan taught him to read and write - his son was not going to grow up illiterate like he had.” - RK
“God help the Hazaras now, Rahim Kahn.” - H
“A few weeks later, the Taliban had banned kite fighting. And two years later, in 1998, they massacred the Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif.”
Hassan’s letters and his death, Amir’s reflection- Ch.17, Ch.18
“I am hopeful that one day I will hold one of your letters in my hands and read of your life in America.” - H
“I thank Allah that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband, and my son is not an orphan.” - H
“I have taught him to read and write so he does not grow up stupid like his father.” - H
“The tree hasn’t borne fruit in years.” - H
“And I dream that someday you will return to Kabul to revisit the land of our childhood.” - H
“‘like wolves looking at a flock of sheep’” - RK
“his life of unrequited loyalty drifting from him like the windblown kites he used to chase.”
“I think we both know why it has to be you, don’t we?” - RK
“Baba and I were more alike than I’d ever known. We had both betrayed the people who would have given their lives for us.”
“Rahim Kahn had summoned me here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba’s too.”
“Hassan had loved me once, loved me in a way that no one had or ever would again. He was gone now, but a little part of him lived on. It was in Kabul.”
Amir meeting Farid and his family and his changing attitudes - Ch.19
“You’ve always been a tourist here you just didn’t know it.” - F
“My illegitimate half brother.”
“stealing furtive glances at my digital wristwatch.”
“You are an honourable man, Amir agha. A true Afghan.” - Wahid
“I understood now why the boy’s hadn’t shown any interest in the watch. They hadn’t been staring at the watch at all. They’d been staring at my food.”
“I did something I had done twenty six years earlier: I planted a fistful of crumpled money under a mattress.”
Afghanistan that Amir returned to - Ch.24, Ch.21, Ch.19, Ch.15
“They don’t let you be human” - RK
“He pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes… ‘That’s the real Afghanistan, Agha sahib. That’s the Afghanistan I know.’” - F
“The kinship I felt suddenly for the old land . . . it surprised me”
“Hardly any of them sat with an adult male - the wars had made fathers a rare commodity in Afghanistan.”
“Returning to Kabul was like running into an old, forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn’t been good to him, that he’d become homeless and destitute.”
“Held my gaze. I’d never felt so naked in my entire life.”
“Most of the poplar trees had been chopped down - the trees Hassan and I used to climb.”
“that looked all wrong: Baba’s black Mustang belonged there.”
“Like so much else in Kabul, my father’s house was the picture of fallen splendour.”
“Looking at the wilted, leafless tree, I doubted it ever would again.”
Amir going to orphanage - Ch. 20
“He’s inseparable from that thing. He tucks it in the waist of his pants everywhere he goes.” - Z
“Many of them have fathers in the war, and their mothers can’t feed them because the Taliban don’t allow them to work.” - Z
“ample supply here is children who’ve lost their childhood.” - Z
“I would not leave Afghanistan without finding Sohrab.”
“You’re selling children!” - F
“The children are watching.”
“If I deny him one child, he takes ten. So I let him take one and leave the judging to Allah. I swallow my pride and take his goddamn filthy . . . dirty money. Then I go to the bazaar and buy food for the children.” - Z
“A group of children surrounded him, clutching the hem of his loose shirt.”
Stoning at Ghazi Stadium - Ch.21
“There were holes and craters everywhere, not notably a pair of deep holes in the ground.”
“The trucks drove around the track, slowly, as if to let the crowd get a long look. It had the desired effect: People craned their necks, pointed, stood on tiptoes.”
“I suddenly understood the purpose of those two holes behind the goalposts.”
“I had never in my life wanted to be away from a place as badly as I did now. ‘But we have to stay.’”
“I will never, as long as I drew breath, forget the sound of that scream. It was the cry of a wild animal trying to pry its mangled leg free from the bear trap.”
“Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys. They do nothing but thumb their rosaries and recite a book written in a tongue they don’t even understand. God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.”
“God says that every sinner must be punished in a manner befitting his sin.”
“Farid was shaking his head. ‘And they call themselves Muslims.’” - F
“glasses like the ones John Lennon wore.”
“The man in the hole was now a mangled mess of blood and shredded rags.”
“the bloodied corpses had been unceremoniously tossed into the backs of red pickup trucks”
“how unofficial even official matters still were in Afghanistan”
