913 Quotes by Khaled Hosseini

It was the way Nana uttered the word – not so much saying it as spitting it at her – that made Mariam feel the full sting of it.

For you, a thousand times over.” Then I turned and ran. It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything alright. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.

I know you’re still young, but I want you to understand and learn this now, he said. Marriage can wait, education cannot. You’re a very, very bright girl. Truly, you are. You can be anything you want, Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men, maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance.

This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.

I don’t know what this feather means, the story of it, but I know it means he was thinking of me. For all these years. He remembered me.

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.

In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.

War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.

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 its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.