Khaled Hosseini Quotes - Page 3

Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.

It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.

Was there happiness at the end [of the movie], they wanted to know. If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab, and me ends with happiness, I wouldn't know what to say. Does anybody's? After all, life is not a Hindi movie. Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, undmindful of beginning, en, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.

And this is what I want you to understand, that good, real good, was born out of your father's remorse. Sometimes, I thing everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.

One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I'd just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples.

But then it passed, as all things do.

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.

I finally had what I'd wantes all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything.

The Chinese say it's better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one.

It's tremendous what can happen when suddenly you make an emotional connection.

My family left Afghanistan in 1976, well before the Communist coup and the Soviet invasion. We certainly thought we would be going back. But when we saw those Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan, the prospect for return looked very dim. Few of us, I have to say, envisioned that nearly a quarter century of bloodletting would follow.

I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person's heart

A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.

As far as I know, he never asked where she had been or why she had left and she never told. I guess some stories do not need telling.

All good things in life are fragile and easily lost

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.

True redemption is...when guilt leads to good.

There is a way to be good again.

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

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

hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.

He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.

She was the trembler of knees, the spiller of teacups.