01c. 1965 ADIt was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. 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. - AmirKhaled Hosseini / quote ↗
02c. 1965 ADMother is fading for him, her face receding into shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from a fist.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
03c. 1965 ADHe knew I betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
04c. 1965 ADThe reputation of a girl ... is a delicate thing. Like a mynah bird in your hands. slacken your grip and away it flies.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
06c. 1965 ADWhen you kill a man, You steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, Rob his children of a father.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
07c. 1965 ADMamà 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.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
09c. 1965 ADI finally had what I'd wantes all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
10c. 1965 ADKabul fell prey to men who looked like they had tumbled out of their mothers with Kalashnikov in hand...Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
11c. 1965 ADHer eyes traced the sleek shape of the table's 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 father's table.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
12c. 1965 ADI loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd 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 wasn't 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.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
13c. 1965 ADI 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.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
14c. 1965 ADI 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.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
15c. 1965 ADI 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.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
17c. 1965 ADthese random unkind moment that catch you wen you least expect them.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
19c. 1965 ADThe cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet - they all begin to blur. I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
20c. 1965 ADThey say, find a purpose in life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind. And now that I had fulfilled mine, I felt aimless and adriftKhaled Hosseini / quote ↗
21c. 1965 ADThey rarely look at Baba -- the teenagers -- and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
22c. 1965 ADQualities you need to get through medical school and residency: Discipline. Patience. Perseverance. A willingness to forgo sleep. A penchant for sadomasochism. Ability to weather crises of faith and self-confidence. Accept exhaustion as fact of life. Addiction to caffeine a definite plus. Unfailing optimism that the end is in sight.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
23c. 1965 ADMy books are about ordinary people, like you, me, people on the street, people who really have an expectation of reasonable happiness in life, want their life to have a sense of security and predictability, who want to belong to something bigger than them, who want love and affection in their life, who want a good future for the children.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
24c. 1965 ADI'm a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ordinary things.Khaled Hosseini / quote ↗
