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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

Whether you do something or decide to do nothing, either way, you are making a moral choice. And I hope people make the right one.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Choice Decision Hope Moral Oneself People Right Yourself
The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Black Decision Fear Hate Himself Live Love Person Problem See White World
Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Beautiful Gift Stupidity
The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Bloom Fade Flower Live Spring
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
I think novelists, when they write their books, end up having occasionally serving a purpose and playing roles that they never really fully either intended or even understood.
KHALED HOSSEINI

End Novel Play Purpose Role Thinking Understand Writing
I 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 HOSSEINI

Empty Night Place Reality Rise Summer Tears Throat
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.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Beautiful Earth Fall Nature Sky Soft Stand Sun View
Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Detail Greedy Theft Time
And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Confidence Hope Inspirational Knowledge Motivational Myself Win Wisdom
Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Act Face Hard Person Punishment Simplicity Wait
It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Hurt Lose Place Wisdom
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

Life Peace Quiet Silence Tranquility
And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Meaning People Talk Thinking Worth
What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Deep Goodness Lost Regret Return Wisdom
Life just doesn’t care about our aspirations, or sadness. It’s often random, and it’s often stupid and it’s often completely unexpected, and the closures and the epiphanies and revelations we end up receiving from life, begrudgingly, rarely turn out to be the ones we thought.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Aspiration Care Expectation Life Oneself Sad Stupidity

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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