Khaled Hosseini Quotes

157 Sourced Quotes

Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman.

Khaled Hosseini
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.

Khaled Hosseini
War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.

Khaled Hosseini
If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thous didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting.

Khaled Hosseini
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.

Khaled Hosseini
And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.

Khaled Hosseini
What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.

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

Khaled Hosseini
After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life; one disappointing son and two suitcases.

Khaled Hosseini
For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose.

Khaled Hosseini
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.

Khaled Hosseini
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.

Khaled Hosseini
Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.

Khaled Hosseini
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.

Khaled Hosseini
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
Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.

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

Khaled Hosseini
In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity.

Khaled Hosseini
I stepped back and all I saw was rain through windowpanes that looked like melting silver.

Khaled Hosseini
He stopped, turned. He cupped his hands around his mouth. ''For you a thousand times over!'' he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner.

Khaled Hosseini
A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.

Khaled Hosseini
She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies, and sometimes not.

Khaled Hosseini
I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

Khaled Hosseini
Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

Khaled Hosseini
Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that's all she can do. That and hope.

Khaled Hosseini
I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.

Khaled Hosseini
Tell your secrets to the wind but don't blame it for telling the trees.

Khaled Hosseini
There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.

Khaled Hosseini
She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.

Khaled Hosseini
It is a heartBreaking sound, Amir Jan, the Wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you Never hear it.

Khaled Hosseini