01UndatedThere is only one sin, only one, and that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right of a husband, you rob his children of a father. When you lie you steal someone's right to truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no more wretched act than stealing. A man who takes what is not his to take, be it life or a loaf of naan, I spit on such a man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
02Undatedwar. Or, rather, wars. Not one, not two, but many wars, both big and small, just and unjust, wars with shifting casts of supposed heroes and villains, each new hero making one increasingly nostalgic for the old villain. The names changed, as did the faces, and I spit on them equally for all the petty feuds, the snipers, the land mines, bombing raids, the rockets, the looting and raping and killing.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
03Undatedshe was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back.She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
04Undated... there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
06UndatedHe thought about his long life and gave thanks for all the bounty and joy that he had been given. To want more, to wish for yet more, he knew, would be petty. He sighed happily, and listened to the wind sweeping down from the mountains, to the chirping of night birds.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
07UndatedStories close the gap and reconcile between what we want life to be and how it actually is.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
08UndatedPerspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
09UndatedIt would be an existence rife with difficulties... but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heirloom.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
10UndatedSoon, he would become an adult. And when he did, there would be not going back because adulthood was akin to what his father had once said about being a war hero: one you became one, you died one.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
11UndatedI wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
13UndatedYou've turned out good.You've made me proud, Markos.I am fifty-five years old. I have waited all my life to hear those words. Is it too late now for this? For us? Have we squandered too much for too long? Part of me thinks it is better to go on as we have, to act as though we don't know how ill suited we have been for each other. Less painful that way. Perhaps better than this belated offering. This fragile, trembling little glimpse of how it could have been between us. All it will beget is regret, I tell myself, and what good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
14UndatedMammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
15UndatedThen I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
16UndatedShe was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than i did the sun for shining on me.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
17UndatedTo see her, amid all of it. To see that contentment and beauty were not unattainable things.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
18UndatedShe thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
19UndatedWhen Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety. "What a scene you're making," Laila would say, releasing her to crawl toward Mariam. "What a scene! Calm down. Khala Mariam isn't going anywhere. There she is, your aunt. See? Go on, now." As soon as she was in Mariam's arms, Aziza's thumb shot into her mouth and she buried her face in Mariam's neck. Mariam bounced her stiffly, a half-bewildered, half-grateful smile on her lips. Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly.Aziza made Mariam want to weep."Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair. "Huh? I am nobody, don't you see? A dehati. What have I got to give you?"But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marvelled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
20UndatedHer beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
21UndatedIt's basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes, in fact often, it doesn't 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.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
22UndatedA part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't 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.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
23UndatedYour job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
24UndatedExploitation to finance a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids was another.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
