Khaled Hosseini

“Sad stories make good books”

“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.”

“After all, didn't all fathers in their secret hearts harbor a desire to kill their sons?”

“I think he loved us equally, but differently.”

“I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.”

“Djeca nisu bojanke. Ne možeš da ih ispuniš svojim omiljenim bojama.”

“To je bilo davno, ali ljudi griješe kada kažu da prošlost može da se pokopa.”

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

“But coming close wasn't the same as winning, was it? ... He had won because winners won and everyone else just went home”

“But Mariam hardly noticed, hardly cared...the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that Love was a damaging mistake and its accomplice, Hope, a treacherous illusion.”

“Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet 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. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings”

“If I ever do get married," Tariq said, "they'll have to make room for three on the wedding stage. Me, the bride, and the guy holding the gun to my head”

“When you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”

“Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.Mine was Baba.His was Amir. My name.Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975 —and all that followed— was already laid in those first words.”

“I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.”

“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”

“lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty.”

“Hassan returned the smile. Except his didn’t look forced. And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too”

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

“Les enfants ne sont pas des livres de coloriage. Tu ne peux pas les peindre avec tes couleurs préférées. The kite runner”

“c'est une erreur d'affirmer qu'on peut enterrer le passé, il s'accroche tant et si bien qu'il remonte toujours à la surface.”

“Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile. Never mind any of those things. Because history isn't easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi'a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.”

“Bareh tu hazar dafa!”

“Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, Laila had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which Tariq's father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq's absence or presence.”

“They would make new lives for themselves—peaceful, solitary lives—and there the weight of all that they'd endured would lift from them, and they would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.”

“A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her.”

“Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.”

“It's wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.”

“Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”

“The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980s: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules.”

“with a thug of a string, i'd cut loose my pain, my longing...”

“After all, life is not a Hindi movie.”

“Laila imagines she sees little Mariam there in the hut as a woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but SHAPED by by the turbulence that washes over her.”

“You’re not going to cry, are you?- I am not going to cry! Not over you. Not in a thousand years.”

“Her eyes, walnut brown and shaded by fanned lashes, met mine. Held for a moment. Flew away.”

“I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over those mountains, Kabul still existed. It really existed, not just as an old memory, or as the heading of an AP story on page 15 of the San Francisco Chronicle.”

“Laila remembered how Mammy had dropped to the ground, how she’d screamed, torn at her hair. But Laila couldn’t even manage that. She could hardly move. She could hardly move a muscle.She sat on the chair instead, hands limp in her lap, eyes staring at nothing, and let her mind fly on. She let it fly on until it found the place, the good and safe place, where the barley fields were green, where the water ran clear and the cottonwood seeds danced by the thousands in the air; where Babi was reading a book beneath an acacia and Tariq was napping with his hands laced across his chest, and where she could dip her feet in the stream and dream good dreams beneath the watchful gaze of gods of ancient, sun-bleached rock.”

“Look at me, Mariam.'Reluctantly, Mariam did.Nana said, 'Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

“God Has a reason”

“um zu schreien, musst du atmen.”

“If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar.”

“You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.”

“Zindagi migzara (life goes on)”

“Love was a damaging mistake and its accomplice,hope, a treacherous illusion".”

“Some days, I listen to that clock ticking in the hallway. Then I think of all the ticks, all the minutes, all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without you. And I can’t breathe then, like someone’s stepping on my heart. I get so weak. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.”

“Laila's warning from Wajma: This is why the Holy Koran forbids sharab. Because it always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of the drunk.”

“There was so much goodness in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved any of it.”

“Kinderen zijn geen kleurboeken. Je kunt ze niet met je lievelingskleuren inkleuren.”

“Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks.”

“On a high mountain I stood, And cried the name of Ali, Lion of God.O Ali, Lion of God, King of Men, Bring joy to our sorrowful hearts.”