I am currently reading Khaled Hosseini's novel, "A Thousand Splendid Suns." Reading this brought me back to the first time I read one of his books: I was in eleventh grade and it was "The Kite Runner." The story is one of unlikely friendship between a rich boy, Amir, and his servant, Hassan, who grow up together against the backdrop of war and political unrest in the Middle East. I loved the story, thought the writing was incredible, and would recommend it to anyone who asked. Here are some of my favorite quotes from "The Kite Runner"...I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
"For you, a thousand times over."
"It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime."
"And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
“it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.”
“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”
“There is a way to be good again...”
“There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.”
“It 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.”
“She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.”
“People say that eyes are windows to the soul.”
“Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.”
“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.”
“A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”
“I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.”
“Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it."
“One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I'd just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples.”
"War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace."
“In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.”
"Some stories don't need telling.”
“You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it.”
“Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads).”
