Khaled Hosseini Quotes page 3

“I shook my head no. For minutes, neither of us spoke a word. It breathed between us, what he had said, the pain of a life suppressed, of happiness never to be.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“He says this is war. There is no shame in war. Tell him he's wrong. War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“There will be no floating waway. There will be no other reality tonight.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not break. - Amir”

Source: The Kite Runner

“If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.”

Source: The Kite Runner (2003), Ch. 2
Context: Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break.Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.Mine was Baba.His was Amir. My name.Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975—and all that followed—was already laid in those first words (11).

Khaled Hosseini

“He is annoyed with their lack of interest, their blithe ignorance of the arbitrary genetic lottery that has granted them their privileged lives.”

“All my life, she gave to me a shovel and said, Fill these holes inside of me, Pari.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“It was you Nabi.
It was always you.
Didn't you know?”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Give sustenance, Allah.
Give sustenance to me.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“If I ever do get married," Tariq said, "they'll have to make room for three on the wedding stage. Me, the bride, and the guy holding the gun to my head”

A Thousand Splendid Suns

“When you kill a man, you steal a life," Baba said. "You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.”

Variant: When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

“I see America has infused you with the optimism that has made her so great”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not,
Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not.
If a flood should arrive, to drown all that's alive,
Noah is your guide in the typhoon's eye, grieve not.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“For you, a thousand times over." Then I turned and ran. It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything alright. It didn't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. But I'll take it. With open arms.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“I guess some stories do not need telling.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“You know."
"Know what?"
"That I only have eyes for you.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“After all, life is not a Hindi movie.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“She would grab whatever she could -a look, a whisper, a moan - to salvage from perishing, to perserve. But time is most unforgivving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Awake. And alone with demons of my own.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts. Such grace, such dignity, such a tragedy.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran.”

Variant: The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.
Source: The Kite Runner

“Mariam always held her breath as she watched him go. She held her breath and, in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second that she didn't breathe God would grant her another day with Jalil.”

Source: The Kite Runner (2003), P. 391

“A person who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them.”

Variant: A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.
Source: The Kite Runner

“She was the trembler of knees, the spiller of teacups.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Words were secret doorways and I held all the keys.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Must have been quite the culture shock, going there.”
“Yes it was.” Idris doesn’t say that the real culture shock has been in coming back.”

Source: The Kite Runner

“you say you have no courage, but i see it in you. what you did, the burden you agreed to shoulder, took courage. for that, i honor you.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Khaled Hosseini

“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.”

“It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to--worrying that things aren't going to work out.”

1
Variant: 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.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Khaled Hosseini

“And I wrote to you, Laila. Volumes.”

“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

Tariq
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

“You say their stories, it is gift they give you.”

Rahim Khan, Ch. 3
Variant: Rahim Khan laughed. “Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

“Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for most part has been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it.”

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks.”

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

“about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.”

Source: The Kite Runner