# data[].attributes.body
"He had the blue kite in his hands; that was the first thing I saw. And I can't lie now and say my eyes didn't scan it for any rips" (65).

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I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real person I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba (65).

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“I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.“ (89)

# data[].attributes.headline
Adam T “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. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.” (2)

# data[].attributes.subject
Adam T “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. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.” (2)

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"In the end, I ran. I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me" (65).

# data[].attributes.body
"Take him back to Peshawar. There are people there who will take care of him" (203).

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"The only gift I didn't toss in that mound was Rahim Khan's leather bound notebook. That was the only one that didn't feel like blood money." (86)

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I have a wife in America, a home, a career, and a family. But how could I pack up and go back home when my actions may have cost Hassan a chance at those very same things? I wished Rahim Khan hadn't called me. I wished he had let me live on in my oblivion" (192).

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"I see the barrel first. Then the man standing behind him. He is tall, dressed in a herringbone vest and a black turban. He looks down at the blindfolded man before him with eyes that show nothing but a vast, cavernous emptiness… For a moment a fading sunlight catches in the metal and twinkles… I follow the barrel on its upward arc. I see the face behind the plume of smoke swirling from the muzzle. I am the man in the herringbone vest." (205)

# data[].attributes.body
" I wished I too had a scar that would beget Baba's sympathy. It wasn't fair. Hassan hadn't done anything to earn Baba's affections; he'd just been born with that stupid harelip" (38).

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"A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up for anything" (18)

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"I was afraid the appeal of my life in America would draw me back, that I would wade back into that great, big river and let myself forget, let the things I had learned these last few days sink to the bottom. I was afraid that I'd let the waters carry me away from what I had to do... So I left before there was any possibility of that happening" (196).

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My whole life, I had been "Baba's son. Now he was gone. Baba couldn't show me the way anymore; I'd have to find it on my own" page 150

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“I have a wife in America, a home, a career, and a family. Kabul is a dangerous place, you know that, and you’d have me risk everything for…” I stopped.

“You know," Rahim Khan said, “one time, when you weren’t around, your father and I were talking. And you know how he always worried about you in those days. I remember he said to me, ‘Rahim, a boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.’ I wonder, is that what you’ve become?” (221)

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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. (154)

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"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. I just watched. Paralyzed." (73)

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"'I'm a dying man and I will not be insulted! It has never been about money for me, you know that. And why you? I think we both know why it has to be you, don't we?' I didn't want to understand that comment, but I did. I understood it all too well." (187-188)

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"The least I could have done was to have had the decency to have turned out a little more like [Baba]. But I hadn't turned out like him" (14).

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"I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan--the way he'd stood up for me all those times in the past--and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran." (65) 

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“I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief” (89)

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"I wanted baba all to myself." (10)
I found the idea of Baba clobbering
a thief both exhilarating and terribly frightening. "Yes, Baba." (14)

# data[].attributes.body
""He pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub grass tied to his back. 'That's the real Afghanistan, agha sahib. That's the Afghanistan I know. You? You've always been a tourist here, you just didn't know it.'" (197)

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“Earlier that morning, when I was certain no one was looking, I did something I had done twenty-six years: I planted a fistful of crumpled money under mattress” (207)

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"But I didn't. I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just one of them." 142

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“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, and a thief” (89).