Khaled Hosseini: Trending quotes

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

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

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

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)

“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