The Kite Runner.

A few quotes from this most magnificent book.

"But it wasn't just that she'd found an audience for her monologues of illness. I firmly believed that if I had picked up a rifle and gone on a murdering rampage, I would have still had the benefit of her unblinking love. Because I had rid her heart of its gravest malady, I had relieved her of the greatest fear of every Afghan mother: that no honorable khastegar would ask for her daughter's hand. That her daughter would age alone, husbandless, childless. Every woman needed a husband. Even if he did silence the song in her."

"...I suspected every bearded man who stared at me to be a Talib killer, sent by Assef. Two things compounded my fears: There are a lot of bearded men in Peshawar, and everybody stares."

"...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."

"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.

...

I ran."

a whispered yes

stunning sometimes to ponder
that all my future knowing
and all my future doing
will be a knowing-with and doing-for;
that you love me enough,
and love me yet,
to whisper me a Yes with your life.

-- john piper