She said, ‘I’m so afraid.’ And I said, ‘why?,’ and she said, ‘Because I’m so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you.
KHALED HOSSEININot a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything
More Khaled Hosseini Quotes
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A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.
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He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
And that, is the story of our country, one invasion after another Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we’re like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.
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Hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.
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You’re gutless. It’s how you were made. And that’s not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you’ve never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is God help him.
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You can not stop you from being who you are.
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It’s a funny thing… but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they’re afraid of. What they don’t want.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
In many parts of the world, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need women to solve the problems that men create.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
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.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed. It won’t stretch to make room for you.
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But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.
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It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.
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Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
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.
KHALED HOSSEINI