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

—  Khaled Hosseini , book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it." by Khaled Hosseini?
Khaled Hosseini photo
Khaled Hosseini 226
novelist 1965

Related quotes

John Cage photo

“What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

as quoted in "Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music", January, 1996; ISBN 0819563110
1990s

Harry Reid photo

“In the summertime, because it gets so hot here, you could literally smell the tourists coming.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

Following opening of a new Capitol Visitors Center that includes air conditioning.
[Ashley, Halsey III, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/12/03/ST2008120300627.html, Right at Home Under the Dome, Washington Post, December 3, 2008, 2008-12-03]

Andrei Codrescu photo

“Unchecked, the tourist will climb over the fence and come right into your house to take pictures of you in your habitat. Cities mindful of tourists have built elaborate “tourist traps” which, luckily, work. Tourists are kept confined to these, and few escape. There is, of course, the type known as the “intrepid tourist.” This one has to be watched carefully or he can become most annoying. Little wonder these are so often the target of terrorists. If there is an aspect of benign terror about the tourist, there is also a great deal of tourist in the terrorist. Terrorists travel with only one thing in mind, just like the tourist, and the specifics of places escape them both. Terrorists travel for the purpose of shooting unsuspecting foreigners, just as tourists travel for the purpose of shooting them with a camera.”

Andrei Codrescu (1946) American writer

“The Tourist,” Raised by Puppets (1990).

Laurell K. Hamilton photo

“If you're dressed for my funeral, it's too casual. If it's just street clothes, then you must be scaring the tourists.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Obsidian Butterfly

Source: Obsidian Butterfly

Robert Morley photo

“The British tourist is always happy abroad as long as the natives are waiters.”

Robert Morley (1908–1992) English actor

The Observer (20 April 1958), as quoted in "Death of Baron De Kalb" https://books.google.com/books?id=k2QAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=%22I+thank+you+sir+for+your+generous+sympathy,+but+I+die+the+death+I+always+prayed+for:+the+death+of+a+soldier+fighting+for+the+rights+of+man%22&source=bl&ots=-93hJzoCYU&sig=tAag8ObQI-ZjiII56viczov02wM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VlYVVcuJI4KmNsazgYgL&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20thank%20you%20sir%20for%20your%20generous%20sympathy%2C%20but%20I%20die%20the%20death%20I%20always%20prayed%20for%3A%20the%20death%20of%20a%20soldier%20fighting%20for%20the%20rights%20of%20man%22&f=false (1849), by Benjamin Franklin Ells, The Western Miscellany, Volume 1, p. 233.

John Banville photo

“I know that this is a cliché by now and I suppose that Prague people are sick and tired of hearing Prague referred to as ‘Magic Prague’, but, you know, I may complain about the tourists, but I am a tourist after all. I'd rather not be, but I am.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

“Should you revisit us
Stay a little longer
And get to know the place…
On local life we trust
The resident witness
Not the royal tourist.”

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) English novelist, poet, critic, teacher

"New Approach Needed", about the Second Coming, (p. 27)
A Look Round the Estate: Poems, 1957–1967 (1968)

Carl Sagan photo

“Imagine how different our world would be if those discoveries had been explained and used for the benefit of everyone, if the humane perspective of Eratosthenes had been widely adopted and applied. But this was not to be. Alexandria was the greatest city the Western world had ever seen. People from all nations came here to live to trade to learn, on a given day these harbours were thronged with merchants and scholars and tourists, it's probably here that the word Cosmopolitan realised its true meaning of a citizen not just of a nation but of the Cosmos, to be a citizen of the Cosmos. Here were clearly the seeds of our modern world, but why didn't they take root and flourish why instead did the Western world slumber through a 1000 years of darkness until Columbus and Copernicus and their contemporaries rediscovered the work done here? I cannot give you a simple answer but I do know this, there is no record in the entire history of the library that any of the illustrious scholars and scientists who worked here ever seriously challenged a single political or economic or religious assumption of the society in which they lived. The permanence of the stars was questioned, the justice of slavery was not.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

28 min 30 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

Prayut Chan-o-cha photo

“Tourists think that Thailand is beautiful, safe and that they can do anything they want here. That they can put on their bikinis and go anywhere they want. I ask, can you get away with wearing bikinis in Thailand? Unless you are not beautiful.”

Prayut Chan-o-cha (1954) Thai military officer, junta chief, and politician

Source: "Thai PM apologises for bikini warning after Britons' murder" in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/18/thai-prime-minister-apologises-bikini-comments-murder (18 September 2014)

Related topics