Quotes from Khaled Hosseini

For you, a thousand times over" ? Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

He was a visionary or a fool I have found the line perilously thin myself

Who rebels with mathematics?

Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency was but one. 

You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you just have to see and feel.

A pathetic shadow, torn between her envy and thrill of being seen with Masomma, sharing in the attention as a weed would, lapping up water meant for the lily upstream.

Even your graffiti artists spray Rumi on the walls

I see the creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing..and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.

I used to picture us as two leaves, blowing miles apart in the wind yet bound by the deep tangled roots of the tree from which we had both fallen.

I just think these people, everything they've been through, we should respect them... By 'we', I mean people like Timur and me. The lucky ones, the ones who weren't here when the place was getting bombed to hell. We're not like these people. We shouldn't pretend we are. The stories these people have to tell, we're not entitled to them... I'm rambling.

How could I be such an open book to him when, half the time, I had no idea what was milling around in his head?

Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could - a look, a whisper, a moan- to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.

I know. I know. But he's always buried in those books or shuffling around the house like he's lost in some dream. And? I wasn't like that. Baba sounded frustrated, almost angry. Rahim Khan laughed. Children aren't colouring books. You don't get to fill them with your favourite colours.

I see a creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

When you kill a man, You steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, Rob his children of a father.

There's no monster...just a beautiful day.

I pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I'd always feared they would.

The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.

I was the lucky one because I was protected by my youth. Je pouvais oublier. I still had the luxury of forgetting. He did not.

What began with exuberance and passion always ended with terse accusations and hateful words, with rage and weeping fits.

She passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and it accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.

Do you even know how strong God has made you? she said. How strong and good He has made you?

It wasn't meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.