Quotes from Yasmina Khadra

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

Tous les Hommes sont sales d'une manière ou d'une autre. Seulement, il y a ceux qu'un simple verre d'eau suffit à laver, et ceux que tous les océans de la terre ne sauraient purifier.

Turmoil and terror aren't compatible with sangfroid. When horror strikes, the heart is always its first target.

Poverty, I decided, had nothing to do with fate; it was simply a state of mind. We accept the world as we see it; we believe it to be immutable. But if we look away from the misery even for a moment, another path appears, bright as a new penny, and so mysterious that we begin to dream...

No, Arabs are not lazy, but we take the time to live life to the full; it is something Europeans don't understand. To them, time is money. To us, time has no price.

The secrets a house is desperate to conceal will, sooner or later, be shouted from the rooftops.

La guerre.. le succube de la mort, la concubine féconde du malheur.

This isnt life, we just exist.

I saved my soul, replied my father For this, firstly, you should have one, old man

Nous sommes aussi l'ensemble des fantômes qui nous hantent... nous sommes plusieurs personnages en un, si convaincants dans les différents rôles que nous avons assumés qu'il nous est impossible de savoir lequel nous avons été vraiment, lequel nous sommes devenus, lequel nous survivra.

It wasnt fair.. 3 days away from the beginning of the harvest, 2 days away from salvation, a breath away from redemption.

Isabelle had the patience of those who believe that tomorrow belongs to them.

Whoever told you a man mustn't cry doesn't know what it means to be a man.... There's no shame in crying, my boy. Tears are the noblest things we have.

One should always look at the sea. It's a mirror that can't lie. Among other things, looking at it has taught me to stop looking behind me. Before, every time I looked over my shoulder, I found my old sorrows and my old ghosts, still intact. They were preventing me from regaining my taste for living. Do you understand what I mean? They were spoiling my chances of rising from my ashes.

When people try to lie there are little things that betray the truth.

El polvo ha cubierto de tierra los huertos, ha cegado las miradas y puesto cemento a las ideas

That's the reason why I chose to spend my last years here and die in my house on the seashore. A man who looks at the sea turns his back on the misfortunes of the world. Somehow, he resigns himself to them.

I'll never understand why the survivors of a tragedy feel compelled to make people believe they're more to be pitied than the ones who didn't make it.

il ne s'agit pas de laver son corps, mais son âme, jeunes gens. si vous êtes pourris de l'intérieur, ni les fleuves ni les océans ne sauraient vous désinfecter.

Au diable la reconnaissance si elle est dispensée par des gens qui ne t'arrivent pas à la cheville.

Les hommes sont ainsi faits ; si Dieu les a créés à Son image, Il n'a pas précisé laquelle.

This room was our ivory tower, Sihem and mine. No one else was ever admitted here. Sometimes we'de come here to commune with our silence and reactivate our senses, dulled and blunted by the noises of every day. We'd bring a book or put on some music, and then we were off. We read Kafka as well as Khalil Gibran, and listened to Oum Kalthoum and Pavarotti with the same grattitude....

Moshen has gradually stopped dreaming. The light of his conscience has gone out.

Life is a train that stops at no stations; you either jump aboard or stand on the platform and watch as it passes, and there is nothing sadder than an abandoned station.