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It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

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.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Bone Cruelty Dreams Hope Learning Mad Skin World
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

Change Improvement Internet Invention Joke Laughter Old War
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

Culture End Home Identity Key Language Legal Room Yourself
Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Action Life Ourselves Time Understand
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.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Bleed Heart Man Mom Room Yourself
I’ve read that if an avalanche buries you and you’re lying there underneath all that snow, you can’t tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your own demise.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Bury Lying Reading Wrong Yourself
Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Boy Direction Enjoyment Friendship See Sun Treat
But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Charm Deep Thinking Time Wisdom Yourself
But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Comfortable Hurt Lying Truth
Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts, and insights, and feelings. But every person is crippled in his or her own way by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Ability Feeling Ocean Ourselves Path Person Present Thinking True Universe Walk World
You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Books Feeling Learning See Teaching Yourself
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.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Brave Country Ourselves Pretty Ruin Story Strength
Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Fiction Greatness Lying Truth Writing
Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Book Children Color Deep Parents Teaching Yourself
A sudden happiness catches me unawares. I feel it trickling into me, and my eyes go liquid with gratitude and hope.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Eyes Feeling Gratitude Happiness Hope Tears Trick Water
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.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Bury Deep Learning Past Wrong

It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

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It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

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