Quotes from book

A Thousand Splendid Suns

“she held her breath, and in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second she didn’t breathe, God would grant her another day”

“The Chinese say it is better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one.”

“She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.”

“It always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of the drunk.”

“A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied butby the turbulence that washes over her.”

“Each snowflake was a sigh heard by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. All the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women suffer.”

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

“Look at me, Mariam.'
Reluctantly, Mariam did.
Nana said, 'Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Laila: Tell your secrets to the wind but don't blame it for telling the trees.”

“You can not stop you from being who you are.”

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

“And that, my young friends, is the story of our country, one invader after another. Macedonians. Sassanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.”

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