Khaled Hosseini citations

Page 2

“c'est une erreur d'affirmer qu'on peut enterrer le passé, il s'accroche tant et si bien qu'il remonte toujours à la surface.”

“La beauté est un don du ciel énorme, immérité, accordé de manière aléatoire et stupide.”

“J'ai appris que le monde ne voit pas ce qu'il y a en vous, qu'il se moque complètement des espoirs, des rêves, des chagrins qui reposent cachés sous votre peau et vos os. C'est aussi simple que ça. Mes patients le savent, eux. Il constataient qu'une grande partie de ce qu'ils étaient, de ce qu'ils seraient ou de ce qu'ils pourraient être dépendait de la symétrie de leur ossature, de l'espace entre leurs yeux, de la longueur de leur menton, de leur nez, du fait qu'ils aient ou non un angle naso-frontal idéal ou pas.”

“Mais la bataille qui se livrait en lui se lisait sur son visage. Et sa peur aussi. Pas seulement celle qu'il éprouvait pour moi et ce qui risquait de m'arriver à 4500 kilomètres de chez nous. Mais aussi la peur qu'il avait de moi. Sa peur de me perdre. Sa peur devant mon absence, de réduire en pièces son coeur mis à nu et vulnérable si je le décidais, comme un doberman déchiquetant un chaton.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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).”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”