I 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 HOSSEINIBut it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.
More Khaled Hosseini Quotes
-
-
I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
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 -
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 -
All good things in life are fragile and easily lost.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
Afghanistan has always been sort of a fractured nation, very tribal, where the countryside and the distant provinces have been run by custom, by tribal law and by tribal leaders rather than edicts from the central government in Kabul.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
She was the trembler of knees, the spiller of teacups.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
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 -
War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.
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 -
The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.
KHALED HOSSEINI -
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 -
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 HOSSEINI -
There is only one sin. and that is theft. When you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.
KHALED HOSSEINI