QUOTES, QUOTES AND MORE QUOTES
PAGE
28
31 Letter to
Amir from
Rahim Khan
40 Assef
43 Amir
46 Snow as a
metaphor
53
55 Hassan
68
Amir
54 Baba
58 Amir about
Hassan
58
72
78
100
178
113 Amir
fleeing
Afghanistan
IMAGINATIO
N
Afghanistan
186
Rafiqs
Memory
69
Dream
70
80-81
83
124
86
91 -92
95
98
QUOTE
Sohrab (son) and Rostram (Father)
Didn’t all fathers in their secret hearts harbour a desire to kill their sons?
Your story has irony...you may not know what that means but one day you will
Someday I’ll make you face me
Just after Baba has paid for Hassan’s operation....
Why Baba waited until I was 10 to have me circumcised...was one of the things I’ll never forgive him
for
The chill between Baba and me thawed a little. We lived in different spheres of existence – Kites one
paper thin slice of intersection between those spheres
Maybe Baba would forgive me for killing my mother
I like where I live – it’s my home
Amir is my friend
Hassan is my servant
Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie
I was the smart one, how could he read me like that?
Baba’s gaze was like the blistering sun....
Baba...proud of me at last (at the kite tournament)
I had a final opportunity to decide who I was going to be...
After winning the kite tournament...
They were all clapping, yelping their praises – only Rahim Khan was silent...
When Hassan and Ali leave
Rain, melting like silver...
After Rahim Khan’s phone call
The parallel silver lines made on the wall by moonlight...I dreamt of Hassan
This happy memory of he and Hassan ...
A stroke of colour on the grey barren canvas that our lives had become
We’re a melancholic people (Rahim)
Afghans are independent and cherish custom and abhor rules...the rule is – no rules – fly your kite
Communist rebels in power before the Taliban
Fortune Teller (Tells Amir and Hassan’s fortune)
On the other side of the wall a rooster crows (metaphor for betrayal)
I am lost in a snow storm...I am a ghost with no footprints
A hand reaches for me...we are in a field of apple green grass (notice what Sohrab says about green
apples later in the text)
Hassan had said there were no monsters in the lake, only water but there was a monster in the
lake...I was that monster....I became an insomniac
When he (Hassan) was present or mentioned, the oxygen seeped out of the room
A pair of steel hands closed around my windpipe...
Incident with the pomegranate ...
I wished he could give me the punishment that I craved...
Rahim Khan tells Amir about his love for an Hazara servant girl when he was 18...
In the end the world always wins
You can tell me anything you want Amir jan...anytime
After his birthday
The only gift that didn’t feel like blood money was Rahim Khan’s notebook
About Hassan
One of us has to go
Hassan doesn’t defend himself against Amir’s accusations (money and watch)
107
111
111
117
121
120
125
126
131
140
147
151
I loved him (Hassan) in that moment...
I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake
Baba after the Russian invasion
War doesn’t negate decency, it demands it...
Kamal – another of Assef’s victims – he dies in the passage from Afghanistan to Pakistan, his father
commits suicide
The summation of Baba’s life –
One disappointing son, two suitases
Baba was the lone Republican (like Liberals) in our building Democrats (like Labour)
EXAMPLES OF BABA’S PRIDE AND STRUGGLE TO ADJUST TO AMERICAN LIFE
1. Lies about fathering Hassan
2. Refuses welfare money
3. Fights with Nguyen shopkeepers who won’t give him credit and want ID
4. His reaction to the doctor with the Russian surname
5. Refuses chemotherapy
He walked out of the welfare office like a man cured of a tumour
For me American was a place to bury my memories, for Baba a place to mourn his...
Amir decides to become a writer...
I didn’t want to sacrifice for Baba anymore...I would stand my ground...
Kabul compared with America
A city of handicapped ghosts...America a river unmindful of the past...In America, no ghosts, no
memories and no sins...
Baba speaking about Soraya and her history, then reflecting on himself...
What happens in a day can change the course of a whole life time Amir
NANG = Honour, NAMOOS = Pride
Amir reflects on Soraya’s passion for teaching...
I thought of how I’d used my literacy to ridicule Hassan
Baba
In your hour of need there’s no one you’d rather have by your side than a Pashtun
How is this ironic in view of how Amir behaved towards Hassan?
I don’t want us to start with secrets...(Soraya)
152
157
I suspect there were many ways she was better than me – Courage was just one of them
RE-READ THE WORDS OF THE WEDDING SONG
They are also used ironically when the Russian soldier drunkenly sings the lyrics intending to rape
one of the refugee women
160
Baba had been wrestling bears his whole life – losing his young wife, raising a son by himself,
leaving his homeland (watan), poverty, indignity, cancer, the bear he couldn’t/wouldn’t wrestle
Baba couldn’t show me the way anymore, I’d have to find it on my own
161
164
General Taheri and his wife (who had been an accomplished singer – they have a traditional Afghan
relationship. Compare it to Amir and Soraya’s...
Amir – Every woman needed a husband, even if it did silence the song in her
166
172
I didn’t care about Soraya’s past – I had one of my own
General Taheri
Blood is a powerful thing – never forget that (says this when he is against them adopting)
Something, someone, somewhere...had decided to deny me fatherhood for the things I’d
done...this was my punishment
Amir’s writing lecturer says – clichés, avoid them like the plague, but often they’re dead on, like the
elephant in the room
Rahim Khan about Taliban
They don’t let you be human
Rahim Khan
There is no such thing as God’s will (Inshallah), there is only what you do and what you don’t do
Amir
I still felt the thorny barbs of guilt (biblical reference – crown of thorns)
Rahim Khan’s account of how he made contact with Hassan and an account of his life. Hassan still
173
182
183
186
186
188 - 197
199 - 202
204
209
215
230
237
242
248
253
255
chose to live in servant quarters out of respect for his former employees
Letters from Hassan to Amir – like a voice from the grave
Rahim Khan challenges Amir
A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up for anything. Is that what
you’ve become?
Amir finds out that Hassan is his half brother
Like father like son...(He realises that his father is capable of betrayal, like him)
Farid to Amir
You’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it
Amir encounters an old beggar who’d been a lecturer on Sufism in Afghanistan...He represents what
the Taliban have done to learning and true spirituality
Zaman (director of the orphanage) – broken glasses, fractured morality
If I deny him one child he takes 10, I swallow my pride, take his dirty money and go to the bazaar and
buy food for the children
Amir: I don’t want to forget anymore
Baba’s comments prophetic
God help us if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands
Amir’s internal monologue
Your saving grace is that you know you’re a coward...there is nothing wrong with
cowardice...you’ve never liked to yourself about it...
Assef about America
How is that whore these days?
Assef talks about his ‘mission’ Amir replies
What mission is that? Stoning adulterers, raping children, flogging women for wearing high heels,
massacring Hazaras, all in the name of Islam?
259 - 260
Assef reveals his motivations for staying in Afghanistan despite his parents’ wealth
265
Amir remembers the pomegranate incident with Hassan after being beaten by Assef
My body was broken but I felt healed (paradox of redemption/sacrifice)
276
Rahim Khan’s letter
You were too hard on yourself then and you still are...
A man who has no conscience does not suffer
I know how hard you father was on you – he was a man torn between two halves. Good was born out
of your father’s remorse
282
Amir’s dream with Assef
We’re the same you and I, you’re my twin
292
Amir to Sohrab
There are bad people in the world and sometimes bad people stay bad – sometimes you have to
stand up to them
304
American embassy official (Andrews) to Amir
It’s a dangerous business making promises to kids
313
Omar Faisal (Immigration lawyer)
That’s how children deal with trauma – they fall asleep
324
After Sohrab’s suicide attempt
Sohrab’s ashen grey face like Hassan’s when I saw him for the last time dragging his belongings
behind Ali
325
Amir’s internal monologue
325
Sohrab – I want my old life back
He yearned for his old life – what he got was me and America...
329
I had been the entitled half – society approved legitimate half, the embodiment of Baba’s guilt.
Hassan was the un-entitled, unprivileged half who had inherited what had been pure and noble in
Baba
332
While Sohrab was silent the world was not – the Twin Towers came tumbling down...Sohrab
sleepwalked through it all
334
I prayed morning namaz (prayers)...the verses came naturally now - effortlessly
Amir to General Taheri
Do not refer to him as that Hazara boy in my presence again – his name is Sohrab
340
At the Kite Competition in the park – it is raining –
A smile from Sohrab a leaf in the woods shaking the wake of a startled bird’s flight – when spring
comes, it melts the snow one snowflake at a time..
Key Quotes for “The Kite Runner”
261
o
“ The man is Pashtan to the root. He has nang and namoos... Honour and pride”. P.134
o
“There is a way to be good again.” (Pg. 1) This is said by Rahim Khan to Amir to encourage him to help Hassan’s
son escape Afghanistan and finally redeem himself.
o
“I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.”, Said by Amir, story opener that talks
about the time he betrayed his best friend Hassan in an alley in Kabul.
o
“There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not
break.”
o
"For you, a thousand times over." (Pg. 2)
o
"I brought Hassan’s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a
turmoil of uncertainty."
o
"Because when spring comes it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting"
(Pg. 372) Refering to the smile on Sohrab's face, the first one seen in America.
o
"I had been the entitled half, the society-approved, legitimate half, the unwitting embodiment of Baba's guilt. I
looked at Hassan, showing those two missing front teeth, sunlight slanting on his face. Baba's other half. The
unentitled, under-priveleged 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." p.359
o
"I looked down at Sohrab. One corner of his mouth had curled up just so. A smile. Lopsided. Hardly there. But
there." (p.370)
o
"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the
precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. 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." - Ch. 1
o
"Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors." - Ch. 3
o
"If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar."
o
"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." - pg. 361
o
"War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace." - Baba
o
"… I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering it
things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night." - pg. 359
o
"There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not
break."
o
"I brought Hassan’s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a
turmoil of uncertainty."
o
There is only one sin. And that sin is theft… When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth” p.208
o
As it turned out, 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.” P.209
o
“You’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it.” P.215