True redemption is when guilt leads to good.
KHALED HOSSEINITrue redemption is when guilt leads to good.
KHALED HOSSEINII want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.
KHALED HOSSEINII’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 HOSSEINIA story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.
KHALED HOSSEINIYou’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.
KHALED HOSSEINII 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 HOSSEINIWhen you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
KHALED HOSSEINIShe 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 HOSSEINII opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.
KHALED HOSSEININothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.
KHALED HOSSEINIIt was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.
KHALED HOSSEINIBut then it passed, as all things do.
KHALED HOSSEINISome stories don’t need telling.
KHALED HOSSEINITime can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.
KHALED HOSSEINIA man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.
KHALED HOSSEINIQuiet 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