Quotes by Khaled Hosseini

Its basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes, in fact often, it doesnt and it just runs out of steam. The hope for me is that it will snowball. the best way to put it is that I have no particular method or technique per se, other than this: I plan nothing, I outline nothing, I start with an idea or an image or a line of dialogue and see where it leads me. Because I never know what the next page will contain, let alone the end of the book, I am perpetually surprised by the course that my characters take. The writing process is as full of surprises and twists for me as the reading experience is for my readers. I love the spontaneity of writing this way, the possibilities left open, the feeling that I am not constrained or committed to any given path. Every day, I am surprised by something. It may not be the most efficient way of writing, but it has served me well thus far.

A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldnt have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.

Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.

Exploitation to finance a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids was another.

It was only a smile, nothing more. It didnt make everything all right. It didnt make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled birds flight. But Ill 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. - Amir

Mother is fading for him, her face receding into shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from a fist.

He knew I betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.

The reputation of a girl ... is a delicate thing. Like a mynah bird in your hands. slacken your grip and away it flies.

about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.

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

Mamà believed in loyalty above all, even at the cost of self-denial. She also believed it was always best to tell the truth, to tell it plainly, without fanfare, and the more disagreeable the truth, the sooner you had to tell it.

Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

I finally had what Id wantes all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

Kabul fell prey to men who looked like they had tumbled out of their mothers with Kalashnikov in hand...

Her eyes traced the sleek shape of the tables legs, the sinuous curves of its corners, the gleam of its reflective, dark brown surface. She noticed that every time she breathed out, the surface fogged, and she disappeared from her fathers table.

I loved him in that moment, loved him more than Id ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasnt worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over those mountains, Kabul still existed. It really existed, not just as an old memory, or as the heading of an AP story on page 15 of the San Francisco Chronicle.

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.

I sat against one of the house’s clay walls. The kinship I felt suddenly for the old land... it surprised me. I’d been gone long enough to forget and be forgotten. I had a home in a land that might as well be in another galaxy to the people sleeping on the other side of the wall I leaned against. I thought I had forgotten about this land. But I hadn’t. And, under the bony glow of a halfmoon, I sensed Afghanistanhumming under my feet. Maybe Afghanistan hadn’t forgotten me either. I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over those mountains, Kabul still existed. It really existed, not just as an old memory, or as the heading of an AP story on page 15 of the San FranciscoChronicle. Somewhere over those mountains in the west slept the city where my harelipped brother and I had run kites. Somewhere over there, the blindfolded man from my dream had died a needless death. Once, over those mountains, I had made a choice. And now, a quarter of a century later, that choice had landed me right back on this soil.

Who rebels with mathematics?