Quote collection
356 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed."
"The novel [The Kite Runner] came about as an expansion of that original, unpublished short story."
"Even after The Kite Runner was published I continued to practice for another eighteen months. But I had always had a love of writing and a compulsion to do it."
"In 2004, I took a one year sabbatical to finish my second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. At the end of that year, I was not done with my book, and had to in effect resign from work. I did. I never went back."
"The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read."
"My books are about ordinary people, like you, me, people on the street, people who really have an expectation of reasonable happiness in life, want their life to have a sense of security and predictability, who want to belong to something bigger than them, who want love and affection in their life, who want a good future for the children."
"The bulk of our efforts [in The Khaled Hosseini Foundation] has focused on helping build permanent shelters for returning refugees who are homeless, living out in the open or in makeshift homes. This is an area of urgent need as Afghanistan's natural elements are quite harsh, with very hot summers, and freezing winters."
"At the time we are focusing our efforts primarily on building shelters for refugees. Homelessness in Afghanistan is a huge problem."
"Don't be afraid to tell the truth. It's better to hurt someone by truth than to make them happy by lies."
"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."
"I don't know whom or what he was defying. [...] [M]aybe the God he had never believed in."
"I returned to Afghanistan because I had a deep longing to see for myself how people lived, what they thought of their government, how optimistic they were about the future of their homeland."
"People learned to live with the most unimaginable things."
"I was overwhelmed with the kindness of people [in Afghanistan] and found that they had managed to retain their dignity, their pride, and their hospitality under unspeakably bleak conditions."
"If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, [and] to all rooms inside."
"People…shouldn’t be allowed to have new children if they’d already given away all their love to their old ones. It wasn’t fair."
"People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections."
"the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion"
"I was good at being a doctor; my patients liked me. At times people trust you with things they wouldn't tell their spouses. It was a real privilege."
"We will also be funding projects that empower women and children in Afghanistan and now and then give scholarships to Afghan students here in the Bay Area."