Quote collection
356 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The ordinary, utterly mundane reason behind the massacre makes it somehow more terrible, and far more depressing. The word 'senseless' springs to mind, and Idris thwarts it. It's what people always say. A senseless act of violence. A senseless murder. As if you could commit sensible murder."
"I have a particular disdain for Islamic extremism, and of course, in both 'The Kite Runner' and 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' that's obvious."
"I also felt The Kite Runner was a story that would lend itself well to a visual retelling in a graphic novel."
"Throughout the last century there were multiple attempts at giving Afghan women more autonomy, to change marriage laws, to abolish the practice of bride price and child marriage, and to enforce women to be involved in school. Every time, the reaction from the traditionalists was one of contempt and scorn and at times outright rebellion. I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time."
"A pathetic shadow, torn between her envy and thrill of being seen with Masomma, sharing in the attention as a weed would, lapping up water meant for the lily upstream."
"I grew up with some kind of storytelling instinct, and when I write, my default setting is to find a story and then to tell it. It's the only way I know how to write."
"it is a heartBreaking sound, Amir Jan, the Wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you Never hear it."
"She passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and it accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion."
"But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand."
"What was I supposed to be, growing in your womb -- assuming it was even in our womb that I was conceived? A seed of hope? A ticket purchased to ferry you from the dark? A patch for that hole you carried in your heart? If so, then I wasn't enough. I wasn't nearly enough. I was no balm to your pain, only another dead end, another burden, and you must have seen that early on. You must have realized it. But what could you do? You couldn't go down to the pawnshop and sell me."
"She wished she could visit Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But she sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far.... Mariam is in her own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns."
"At the door , she made him promise to go without goodbyes .She closed the door on him . Laila leaned her back against it , shaking against his pounding fists , one arm gripping her belly and a hand across her mouth , as he spoke throughout the door and promised that he would come back for her . She stood there until he tired , until he gave up , and then she listened to his uneven footsteps until they faded , until all was quiet , save for the gunfire cracking in the hills and her own heart thudding in her belly , her eyes , her bones ."
"i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin."
"I didn't remember what month that was, or what year even. I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become."
"I’m all you have in this world Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You ARE nothing!"
"Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads)."
"Literature and film have a way of lifting you from your own existence and transporting you to some foreign place and putting you in the shoes with an experience different than your own."
"Inside Laila too a battle was being waged : guilt on one side, partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction that what she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had been natural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by the knowledge that they might never see each other again."
"The film [Kite Runner] was not as big a hit in the United States as it was worldwide, I think it may have been swallowed up by all the other movies it had to go up against."
"I'm a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ordinary things."