Khaled Hosseini Quotes

Only two weeks since he had left, and it was already happening. Time, blunting the edges of those sharp memories. Laila bore down mentally. What had he said? It seemed vital, suddenly, that she know.Laila closed her eyes. Concentrated.With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when Laila would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by Tariq's name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion—like the phantom pain of an amputee.Except every once in a long while, when Laila was a grown woman, ironing a shirt or pushing her children on a swing set, something trivial, maybe the warmth of a carpet beneath her feet on a hot day or the curve of a stranger's forehead, would set off a memory of that afternoon together. And it would come rushing back. The spontaneity of it. Their astonishing imprudence...It would flood her, steal her breath.But then it would pass. The moment would pass. Leave her feeling deflated, feeling noting but a vague restlessness.

~ Khaled Hosseini

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.

~ Khaled Hosseini

And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

~ Khaled Hosseini

I read daily, not so much for the benefit of my writing, but because I am addicted to it. There is nothing in the world for me that compares to being lost in a really good novel. That said, reading is an absolute must if you want to write. It is a trite enough thing to say, but very true nonetheless. I cannot understand aspiring writers who email me for advice and freely admit that they read very little. I have learned something from every writer I have ever read. Sometimes I have done so consciously, picking up something about how to frame a scene, or seeing a new possibility with regards to structure, or interesting ways to write dialogue. Other times, I think, my collective reading experience affects my sensibilities and informs me in ways that I am not quite aware of, but in real ways that impact how I approach writing. 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

~ Khaled Hosseini

Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.

~ Khaled Hosseini

What began with exuberance and passion always ended with terse accusations and hateful words, with rage and weeping fits.

~ Khaled Hosseini

I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Mammy was soon asleep, leaving Laila with dueling emotions: reassured that Mammy meant to live on, stung that she was not the reason. 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.

~ Khaled Hosseini

And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

~ Khaled Hosseini

It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. 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. Sohrab's silence wasn't the self imposed silence of those with convictions, of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.

~ 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 of a husband, you rob his children of a father. When you lie you steal someone's right to truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no more wretched act than stealing. A man who takes what is not his to take, be it life or a loaf of naan, I spit on such a man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him.

~ Khaled Hosseini

war. Or, rather, wars. Not one, not two, but many wars, both big and small, just and unjust, wars with shifting casts of supposed heroes and villains, each new hero making one increasingly nostalgic for the old villain. The names changed, as did the faces, and I spit on them equally for all the petty feuds, the snipers, the land mines, bombing raids, the rockets, the looting and raping and killing.

~ Khaled Hosseini

she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back.She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother.

~ Khaled Hosseini

... there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Every sinner must be punished in a manner befitting his sin!

~ Khaled Hosseini

He thought about his long life and gave thanks for all the bounty and joy that he had been given. To want more, to wish for yet more, he knew, would be petty. He sighed happily, and listened to the wind sweeping down from the mountains, to the chirping of night birds.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.

~ Khaled Hosseini

It would be an existence rife with difficulties... but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heirloom.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Soon, he would become an adult. And when he did, there would be not going back because adulthood was akin to what his father had once said about being a war hero: one you became one, you died one.

~ Khaled Hosseini

I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency was but one. 

~ Khaled Hosseini

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.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.

~ Khaled Hosseini

She was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than i did the sun for shining on me.

~ Khaled Hosseini

To see her, amid all of it. To see that contentment and beauty were not unattainable things.

~ Khaled Hosseini

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.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Her beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head.

~ Khaled Hosseini

It's basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes, in fact often, it doesn't and it just runs out of steam. The hope for me is that it will snowball. the best way to put it is that I have no particular method or technique per se, other than this: I plan nothing, I outline nothing, I start with an idea or an image or a line of dialogue and see where it leads me. Because I never know what the next page will contain, let alone the end of the book, I am perpetually surprised by the course that my characters take. The writing process is as full of surprises and twists for me as the reading experience is for my readers. I love the spontaneity of writing this way, the possibilities left open, the feeling that I am not constrained or committed to any given path. Every day, I am surprised by something. It may not be the most efficient way of writing, but it has served me well thus far.

~ 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

Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Exploitation to finance a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids was another.

~ Khaled Hosseini

It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting. - Amir

~ Khaled Hosseini

Mother is fading for him, her face receding into shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from a fist.

~ Khaled Hosseini

He knew I betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.

~ Khaled Hosseini

The reputation of a girl ... is a delicate thing. Like a mynah bird in your hands. slacken your grip and away it flies.

~ Khaled Hosseini

about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.

~ Khaled Hosseini

When you kill a man, You steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, Rob his children of a father.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Mamà believed in loyalty above all, even at the cost of self-denial. She also believed it was always best to tell the truth, to tell it plainly, without fanfare, and the more disagreeable the truth, the sooner you had to tell it.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

~ Khaled Hosseini