Khaled Hosseini - 'And the Mountains Echoed'

“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.” 

“J’aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.” 

“When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.”