Khaled Hosseini quotes - page 8

Jalil: I think you look like a queen. (Khaled Hosseini)
Mariam: What do you think? View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Laila (at fourteen years): What would your mother say when she saw you smoke? View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans, not this Flat-Nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
A man ... 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. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Maybe it was senseless to want to be near a person so badly here in a country where bullets had shredded her own brothers to pieces. But all Laila had to do was picture Tariq going at Khadim with his leg and then nothing in the world seemed more sensible to her. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Tariq: They think its sexy. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Ali and Sanaubar had little in common, least of all their respective appearances. While Sanaubar's brilliant green eyes and impish face had, rumor has it, tempted countless men into sin, Ali had a congenital paralysis of his lower facial muscles, a condition that rendered him unable to smile and left him perpetually grim-faced. It was an odd thing to see the stone-faced Ali happy, or sad, because only his slanted brown eyes glinted with a smile or welled with sorrow. People say that eyes are windows to the soul. Never was that more true than with Ali, who could only reveal himself through his eyes.I have heard that Sanaubar's suggestive stride and oscillating hips sent men to reveries of infidelity. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
It does not frighten me to leave this life that my only son left five years ago, this life that insists we bear sorrow upon sorrow long after we can bear no more. No, I believe I shall gladly take my leave when the time comes. What frightens me, hamshira, is the day God summons me before him and asks, Why did you not do as I said, Mullah? Why did you not obey my laws? How shall I explain myself to him, hamshira? What will be my defense for not heeding His commands? All I can do, all any of us can do, in the time we are granted, is to go on abiding by the laws He has set for us. The clearer I see my end, hamsira, the nearer I am to my day of reckoning, the more determined I grow to carry out His word. However painful it may prove. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Nana (to Mariam): When I'm gone, you'll have nothing in this world. You are nothing! View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Laila: A jeep? Maybe a jumbo jet? (Khaled Hosseini)
Tariq: She doesn't know. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Laila: What girls? View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Laila: That could change. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
She was leaving the world as 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. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break.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 (11). View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Life just doesn't care about our aspirations, or sadness. It's often random, and it's often stupid and it's often completely unexpected, and the closures and the epiphanies and revelations we end up receiving from life, begrudgingly, rarely turn out to be the ones we thought. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
But coming close wasn't the same as winning, was it? ... He had won because winners won and everyone else just went home. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Jailil: Ah yes. Of course. Well then, without further ado... View quote
Khaled Hosseini
And I wrote to you, Laila. Volumes. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
Laila: It isn't fair. (Khaled Hosseini)
Tariq: For you, Laila, I'd go all over the world. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything. View quote
Khaled Hosseini
All my life, I'd been around men. That night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman. View quote
Khaled Hosseini