Khaled Hosseini Quotes

“He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.”

Laila, p. 395
Variant: Every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

“People say that eyes are windows to the soul.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
Context: Nana (to Mariam) : A man's heart isn't like a woman's womb, Mariam! It won't bleed, it won't make room for you. A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. I'm all you have in this world, Mariam and when I'm gone, you'll have nothing. You are nothing!

“You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything - that is how, it is between people who are each other's first memories”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini Quotes about people

“Hassan returned the smile. Except his didn’t look forced. And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too”

Source: The Kite Runner

“I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately, intensely, and without recourse.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“It's wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.”

Source: The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini Quotes about life

“All my life, I'd been around men. That night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life; one disappointing son and two suitcases.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Life is a train, get on board.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“No one has to know. No one would. It would be her secret, one she would share with the mountains only. The question is whether it is a secret she can live with, and Parwana thinks she knows the answer. She has lived with secrets all her life.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Khaled Hosseini: Trending quotes

“Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. -Nana”

Source: The Kite Runner

“There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.”

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

“For you, a thousand times over.”

Source: The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini Quotes

“There is only one sin. and that is theft… when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”

(2) - Hassan, Amir
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

“Marriage can wait, education cannot.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“There is a way to be good again.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.”

(2) - Rahim Khan
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

“War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“They tell me I must wade into waters, where I will soon drown. Before I march in, I leave this on the shore for you. I pray you find it, sister, so you will know what was in my heart as I went under.”

Baba (115)
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

“Attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, [and] to all rooms inside.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.”

Baba (58)
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“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.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

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

Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

“A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated…”

Variant: Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person has to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“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.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“I will follow you to the ends of the world.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“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.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“she is theof my eyes and the sultan of my heart.”

361
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

“You changed the subject."
"From what?"
"The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy."
"You know."
"Know what?"
"That I only have eyes for you.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed (2013)

“In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything.”

Original: (99) Rahim Khan
Variant: It was Homaira and me against the world.... In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Khaled Hosseini

“Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.”

“Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“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.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Men are easy,' he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. 'A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand… well, God put a lot of thought into making you.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“I'm so afraid. Because I'm so profoundly happy. Happiness like this is frightening… They only let you this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“All good things in life are fragile and easily lost”

Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Khaled Hosseini

“A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.”

“Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads).”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“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.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“But the game involves only male names. Because, if it's a girl, Laila has already named her”

Source: The Kite Runner

“Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“and yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“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.”

Mariam, p. 370
A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
Context: She was leaving the world as woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad.

“You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around your neck.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed