Quotes from Khaled Hosseini

People in the countryside carry a sense of dignity. They wear it, don't they? Like a badge? I'm being genuine.

A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand...well, God put a lot of thought in making you.

You know the old bit, he said. You're on a deserted island. You can have five books. Which do you choose? I never thought I'd actually have to.

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

I know now that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately, intensely, and without recourse.

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.

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

I will use a flower petal for paper, And write you the sweetest letter, You are the sultan of my heart, Sultan of my heart.

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

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.

Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

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

Her beauty was the talk of the valley.It skipped two generations of women in our family, but it sure didn't bypass you, Laila.

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

I said to you, Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen. These are only words. A father's tricks, It slays your father, your faith in him. Because all I can think tonight is how deep the sea, and how vast, how indifferent. How powerless I am to protect you from it. All I can do is pray.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?

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.

A life lived from the back seat, observed as it blured by. An indifferent life.

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.

So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one.

I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere. But I hear your mother's voice, over the tide. and she whispers in my ear, Oh, but if they saw, my darling. Even half of what you have. If only they saw. They would say kinder things, surely.

But if you have a book that needs urgent reading,' she said, 'then Hakim is your man.

There is a way to be good again For you, a thousand times over Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything 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 A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie