Quotes from Yasmina Khadra

I had a little light. I blew on it, trying to turn it into a torch, but I blew a bit too hard and put it out.

It seems that the whole world is beginning to decay, and that its putrefaction has chosen to spread outward from here, from the land of the Pashtuns, where desertification proceeds at a steady, implacable crawl even in the consciences and intellects of men.

In the eyes of Popes and Imams we are Us and Them, but in the eyes of the Lord we are one.

Oui, tout à fait Notre pays est un État de droit. C'est indéniable. Encore faut-il préciser de quel droit il s'agit… Il n'y en a qu'un seul, unique et indivisible : le droit de garder le silence.

Somewhere it is written that I was born to leave my home, to constantly leave, each time leaving a part of me behind.

Even though I was growing up in a land that had been tormented since the dawn of time, I refused to consider the world as a battlefield.

What's a house when you've lost a country?' she says with a sigh.

Quant à ce que nous appelons fatalité, ce n'est que notre entêtement à ne pas assumer les conséquences de nos petites et grandes faiblesses.

if he lost his way in a moment of collective hysteria, that's because the horrors of everyday life are sufficiently powerful to overwhelm all defenses, and human degeneracy is deeper than any abyss.

You cannot change what's written in the stars. Liar! Later, much later, I would come to this realisation: nothing is written. If it were, there would be no need fo trials, morality would be an ageing hag and shame would not blush in the presence of vertue. Though there are things beyond our understaning, for the most part we are the architects of our own unhappiness.

On ne retombe pas en enfance, on n'en sort jamais. Vieux, moi? Qu'est-ce qu'un vieillard sinon un enfant qui a pris de l'âge ou du vendre ?...

Quando um mosquito se deixa apanhar numa teia, não pode querer mal à aranha.

Quelle que soit l'ampleur des dégâts, aucun cataclysme n'empêchera la Terre de tourner.

Le poisson rouge ne peut ramener la complexité des océans à la quiétude de son bocal. (p.185)

Les choses se seraient arrêtées là s'il n'y avait pas eu ce coup de vent. Si on m'avait dit qu'un simple coup de vent pouvait changer le cours d'une vie, j'aurais peut-être pris les devant. Mais à dix-sept ans, on se sent en mesure de retomber sur ses pattes quoi qu'il arrive.

The three of us, each paralyzed in his own silence, contemplate the horizon, which the dawn lights up with a thousand fires; and each of us knows for certain that the rising sun of this day, like all those that have gone before it, will be incapable of bringing sufficient light into the hearts of men.

He took a fine fresh fig from his pocket and washed it meticulously in a glass of water; then he peeled it open before our eyes. Inside, the beautiful fig was crawling with maggots. The imam concluded his lesson by saying, 'It's not a question of washing your bodies, but your souls, young men. If you're rotten inside, neither rivers nor oceans will suffice to make you clean.

Ce que Dieu te prête, tu dois savoir le rendre. Aucune chose, sur terre, ne t'appartient vraiment.

Run after her… One day, man will surely be able to catch a comet, but all the glories of this world will not console the man who allows the real opportunity in his life to slip away.

I looked her up and down. She wouldn't meet my eyes. I didn't recognize her anymore. She was nothing like the image of her I had in my head. Her features meant nothing to me; she was someone else.

An aurora borealis rises over festive orchards; the branches of the trees immediately begin to bud, to blossom, to bend under the weight of their fruit. The child runs through the wild grass, heading for the Wall. It collapses like a big cardboard box, broadening the horizon and exorcising the fields, which extend over the plains as far as the eye can see...Run...And the child runs, laughing all the while, his arms spread out like a bird's wings.

You can know all there is to know about life and mankind, but what do you really know about yourself?

A brute is still a brute, even when smiles; the eyes are where the soul declares its true nature.

An isolated person is doomed beyond remedy." Yasmina Khadra, Swallows of Kabul