“Life is a train, get on board.”

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

“I didn't remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew

the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated

morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that

our lives had become. ” 

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but

because we don't have to say anything”

“Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.

Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. - Amir”

“Yes, hope is a strange thing.

Peace at last. But at what price?” 

“Kabul had become a city of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts.

America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this

river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no

ghosts, no memories, and no sins. ”

“I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up

like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer

night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills.” 

“That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past,

I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.” 

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and

slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

“Panic. You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creak. You order your

lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW. But your airways ignore you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze,

and suddenly you're breathing through a drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can manage

is a croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked open and a flood of cold sweat spills,

drenches your body. You want to scream. You would if you could. Cut you

have to breathe to scream. Panic.”

“A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to

live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse:

I was going to get away with it.”

“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I

had. But I didn’t.” 

“Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a

lie.”

“I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to tell them all that I was the snake

in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told,

except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some

pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe

again.”

“Some days, I listen to that clock ticking in the

hallway. Then I think of all the ticks, all the minutes, all the hours and days and

weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without you. And I can’t breathe then, like someone’s stepping on my heart. I get so weak. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.”

“Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it

steals the details for itself.” 

“Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.” 

“Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand

only when nothing can be undone.”

“A man who has no conscience, no goodness,

does not suffer.” 

“it always hurts more

to have and lose

than to not have in the

first place.” 

“Happiness like this is frightening....they only let you be this happy if they're preparing to

take something away from you”

“I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately,

intensely, and without recourse.” 

“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. - Amir”

“It's a funny thing... but 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.”

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a

single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...”

“There is a way to be

good again...” 

“For you, a thousand times over” 

AND