Khaled Hosseini Quotes - Page 8

If you connect emotionally with the plight of those characters, ou feel what they feel and you walk away with a sense of understanding and empathy, and hopefully, something has been illuminated for you. And I tink that's what happendd for a lot of readers with my novels.

she held her breath, and in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second she didn’t breathe, God would grant her another day

I found a sad little fairy Beneath the shade of a paper tree. I know a sad little fairy Who was blown away by the wind one night.

I may not agree with all or even most of the tribal traditions, but it seems ti me that, out there, people live more authentic lives. They have a sturdiness about them. A refreshing humility. Hospitality too. And resilience. A sense of pride.

If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.

They tell me I must wade into waters, where I will soon drown. Before I march in, I leave this on the shore for you. I pray you find it, sister, so you will know what was in my heart as I went under.

There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not break. - Amir

The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around your neck.

Life is a train, get on board.

Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.

Give sustenance, Allah. Give sustenance to me.

I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night.

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I’ve ever written was because I don’t have a choice. I write stories because I can’t wait to tell it, I can’t wait to see how it ends.

It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to--worrying that things aren't going to work out.

It is now your duty to hone that talent, because a person who wastes his God-given talents is a donkey.

Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?

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.

You say their stories, it is gift they give you.

In her smile, Idris sees how little of the world he has known, even at thirty-five years of age, its savageness, its cruelty, its boundless brutality.

I will say that there is an inordinate amount of medicine in my novels, especially the first one. There are a lot of medical things that happen. A hip fracture, three different kinds of lung cancer, pneumonia, blood poisoning, and so on.

and yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.

I brought Hassan’s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty

Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history.

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.

I think the scale of the conflict [in Afghanistan] has dramatically changed in 2003. You're now facing a much more motivated, well-supported enemy. I don't see any quick end to this thing.