black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.

Khaled Hosseini

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.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Bad Coward God Grace Help Lying Remember Save Wrong Yourself
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
There is a way to be good again.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Again Goodness One Liner Way
I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person’s heart.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Charity Heart Humility Judgement Live Person See Time Well
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
True redemption is when guilt leads to good.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Goodness Guilty Leadership Transformation True
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
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
Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Beautiful Gift Stupidity
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 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
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
Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Action Deep Heart Punishment Understand
Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.
KHALED HOSSEINI

God Himself Reason Sorrow
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Count Herself Hide Love Moon Sun Wall Woman
Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Act Expectation Hero Love People Way
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
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
It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Hurt Lose Place Wisdom
Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.
KHALED HOSSEINI

English Existence Learning Word
War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Demand Peace Time War
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
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
All good things in life are fragile and easily lost.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Easy Fragile Goodness Life Lost
But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Charm Deep Thinking Time Wisdom Yourself
But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Charm Deep Thinking Time Wisdom Yourself
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

A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Khaled Hosseini Quotes