Khaled Hosseini quote: "They say, Find a purpose in your 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."

Everything for me starts very small and snowballs. So I rarely start with the grand idea and find a ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time coul...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.
KHALED HOSSEINI

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.
KHALED HOSSEINI

‎I know you're still young but I want you to understand and learn this now. Marriage can wait, edu...
KHALED HOSSEINI

And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Marriage can wait, education cannot.
KHALED HOSSEINI

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathe...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always find...
KHALED HOSSEINI

(...) - trebala sam biti pažljivija. Nitko zbog toga ne zažali. Nikad si u starosti nećeš reći:...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Ljepota je krupan, nezaslužen dar koji se dijeli nasumce, glupavo.

Tako sam odabrao svoj...
KHALED HOSSEINI

There is only what you do and what you don’t do
KHALED HOSSEINI

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
KHALED HOSSEINI

it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.
KHALED HOSSEINI

For you, a thousand times over
KHALED HOSSEINI

I don't think she is underappreciated, certainly not among writers, but Alice Munro is the class...
KHALED HOSSEINI

My parents were reasonably affluent in Kabul. In the States, we were on welfare. My mom became a wai...
KHALED HOSSEINI

In many parts of the world, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need wo...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I lay no claim, it should be clear, to being a historian. So in my books, the intimate and personal ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.
KHALED HOSSEINI

I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in....
KHALED HOSSEINI

When I went to Kabul - weeks after I finished 'The Kite Runner' - I met a lot of people from...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I am always revolted when Islamic leaders, from Afghanistan or elsewhere, deny the very existence of...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.
KHALED HOSSEINI

The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness...
KHALED HOSSEINI

When I go to Afghanistan, I realize I've been spared, due to a random genetic lottery, by being ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I hate resting. I feel restless. My preference is to be working.
KHALED HOSSEINI

I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it&...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it tak...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I have a particular disdain for Islamic extremism, and of course, in both 'The Kite Runner' ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Life just doesn't care about our aspirations, or sadness. It's often random, and it's of...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Syria's neighboring countries cannot and should not carry the cost of caring for refugees on the...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I'm a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ord...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I spent a lot of winters in my childhood flying kites with my brother, with my cousins, with friends...
KHALED HOSSEINI

People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections.
KHALED HOSSEINI

In Afghanistan, you don't understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself a...
KHALED HOSSEINI

There isn't, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on ter...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Afghan people are just so tired of war.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recen...
KHALED HOSSEINI

The Taliban's acts of cultural vandalism - the most infamous being the destruction of the giant ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Qualities you need to get through medical school and residency: Discipline. Patience. Perseverance. ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eyes of the people in this [hospital] ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I've learned things about the craft of writing and about structuring a book and about character ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

There's no excuse for the macro corruption, but Afghanistan was always an informal society with ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to w...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over those mountains, Kabul still existed. It really ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learn...
KHALED HOSSEINI

It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and year...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl wil...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Each snowflake was a sigh heard by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. All the sighs drifted ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

And that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arab...
KHALED HOSSEINI

She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exh...
KHALED HOSSEINI

the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treach...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimagin...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Tariq tucked the gun into the waist of his denims. Then he said a thing both lovely and terrible. "F...
KHALED HOSSEINI

yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obsta...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.
KHALED HOSSEINI

But the game involves only male names. Because, if it's a girl, Laila has already named her
KHALED HOSSEINI

Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a tr...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing c...
KHALED HOSSEINI

You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, yo...
KHALED HOSSEINI

You changed the subject."
"From what?"
"The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy."
KHALED HOSSEINI

she is the noor of my eyes and the sultan of my heart.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I will follow you to the ends of the world.
KHALED HOSSEINI

A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't...
KHALED HOSSEINI

A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...
KHALED HOSSEINI

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hid...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the o...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Afghanistan is doomed if women are barred once again from public life.
KHALED HOSSEINI

The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me.
KHALED HOSSEINI

My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of...
KHALED HOSSEINI

On a high mountain I stood,
And cried the name of Ali, Lion of God.
O Ali, Lion of God, K...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I’ll die if you go. The Jinn will come, and I’ll have one of my fits. You’ll see, I’ll swall...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.
KHALED HOSSEINI

A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.
KHALED HOSSEINI

People say that eyes are windows to the soul.
KHALED HOSSEINI

She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. R...
KHALED HOSSEINI

There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.
KHALED HOSSEINI

In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child rela...
KHALED HOSSEINI

A doctor in a hospital told me that when the mujaheddin were fighting in the early Nineties, he ofte...
KHALED HOSSEINI

There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the tru...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something ex...
KHALED HOSSEINI

In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them.
KHALED HOSSEINI

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Intern...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I rem...
KHALED HOSSEINI

You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And ye...
KHALED HOSSEINI

It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I don't remember how I picked up 'Different Seasons,' but it was a book I read on a grav...
KHALED HOSSEINI

A Western-style democracy in Afghanistan is a dream. I don't see that as a reality anytime soon....
KHALED HOSSEINI

I will say that there is an inordinate amount of medicine in my novels, especially the first one. Th...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.
KHALED HOSSEINI

It hurts to say that,” he said, shrugging. “But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted w...
KHALED HOSSEINI

And I wrote you.
Volumes.
Volumes.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not,
Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not.
...
KHALED HOSSEINI

J’aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. That is something a person will n...
KHALED HOSSEINI

It was you Nabi.
It was always you.
Didn't you know?
KHALED HOSSEINI

Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty c...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Kabul was very popular with the hippies in the Sixties and Seventies. It was very quiet and peaceful...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say a...
KHALED HOSSEINI

You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it.
KHALED HOSSEINI

it always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of the drunk.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Tell your secret to the wind, but don’t blame it for telling the trees.
KHALED HOSSEINI

At times , he didn't understand the meaning of the Koran's words . But he said he liked the enhancin...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Regret... when it comes to you, I have oceans of it.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Give sustenance, Allah.
Give sustenance to me.
KHALED HOSSEINI

You're gutless. It's how you were made. And that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is...
KHALED HOSSEINI

There is a way to be good again...
KHALED HOSSEINI

When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swel...
KHALED HOSSEINI

The cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet - they all begin to blur. I tell myself I ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I'll put it on my table where I keep my drawings," Hassan said.
His saying that made me kind of...
KHALED HOSSEINI

No one snaps our composure quite like someone we love.
KHALED HOSSEINI

I’m all you have in this world Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You ARE nothing!
KHALED HOSSEINI

Too much beauty, it corrupts things.
KHALED HOSSEINI

My books are about ordinary people, like you, me, people on the street, people who really have an ex...
KHALED HOSSEINI

For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat dow...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Writing for me is largely about rewriting.
KHALED HOSSEINI

I'm fascinated by the way early experiences haunt and revisit you, remain present in your life f...
KHALED HOSSEINI

i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old s...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Titanic city" was born.
It's the song, they said.
No, the sea, the luxury, the ship.
...
KHALED HOSSEINI

The only two places where I can read for long stretches are in airplanes and in bed at nighttime.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence.
KHALED HOSSEINI

A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand...well,...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I grew up around a lot of Rumi, Hafez and Omar Khayyam books. My parents in Kabul had all the volume...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I felt on the periphery of high school culture; one of those invisible creatures that walk the campu...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And tho...
KHALED HOSSEINI

The problem, of course, was that [he] saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what wa...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I'm so afraid. Because I'm so profoundly happy. Happiness like this is frightening...They only let y...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Men are easy,' he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. 'A man's plumbing is like his mind: si...
KHALED HOSSEINI

some stories don't need telling
KHALED HOSSEINI

there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When yo...
KHALED HOSSEINI

In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.
KHALED HOSSEINI

War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace." - Baba
KHALED HOSSEINI

I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past c...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a wo...
KHALED HOSSEINI

قلب الرجل مثير للأسى،،إنه مثير للأسى يا مريم،،إنه ليس �...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Must have been quite the culture shock, going there.”
“Yes it was.” Idris doesn’t say ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

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

I was good at being a doctor; my patients liked me. At times people trust you with things they would...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Love was a damaging mistake and its accomplice,hope, a treacherous illusion".
KHALED HOSSEINI

The reputation of a girl ... is a delicate thing. Like a mynah bird in your hands. slacken your grip...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Love is a damaging mistake, and it's accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion" A Thousand Splendid S...
KHALED HOSSEINI

When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling a...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. I didn...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I lay there drifting, wondering, imagining...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Dia berhenti bicara kepada warga desa, karena dia yakin bahwa mereka menggunjingkannya di belakang p...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Sad znam da neki ljudi proživljavaju nesreću onako kao što drugi proživljavaju ljubav: samotno, ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

E, no final das contas, a pergunta que acabava sempre se impondo era: como é que eu, entre todas as...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Ahesta boro, Mah-e-man, ahesta boro.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Zendagi migzara. Life goes on.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Kau tak tahu apa-apa soal keberanian. Untuk menjadi berani, harus ada yang dipertaruhkan. Aku datang...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Katamu kau tak punya keberanian. tapi aku melihatnya di dalam dirimu. Perbuatanmu, beban yang kau ta...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I watch because of that look of acceptance in the animal’s eyes. Absurdly, I imagine the animal un...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Abollah?"

"Ya."

"Kalau aku sudah besar nanti, akankah aku tinggal bersamamu?"<...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Aku akan membawanya pulang, pikir Baba Ayub ketika itu juga. Inilah yang paling diinginkannya, bersa...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Kulihat peri kecil muram
Di keteduhan pohon kertas.
Kumengenal peri kecil muram
Yang ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Ada sebongkah batu di pinggir ladangnya, dan dia duduk di permukaannya yang datar. Dia kerap duduk d...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Dan jika kau miskin, penderitaan menjadi mata uangmu.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Kažu pronađi svrhu u životu i ostvari je. Ali katkad, tek nakon što ga proživiš, uvidiš da je...
KHALED HOSSEINI

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

Mereka bernasib naas, memiliki ayah yang lemah. Seorang pengecut yang lebih memilih melihat mereka s...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Itukan hanya mimpi Amir agha. Dalam mimpi kita bisa melakukan apa saja - Hassan
KHALED HOSSEINI

They only make you so happy when they are about to take something from you
KHALED HOSSEINI

I want to scream again, and I remember that last time I felt this way, riding with Baba in the tank ...
KHALED HOSSEINI

Seruas jari harus dipotong untuk menyelamatkan tangan.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Jika kau sudah hidup selama aku, kau akan mengerti bahwa kekejaman dan kemuliaan hanyalah nuansa yan...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I lay on the side of the dirt road next to a rocky trench, looked up to the gray morning sky, thankf...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe ag...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know withi...
KHALED HOSSEINI

At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cann...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I've read that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I found a sad little fairy
Beneath the shade of a paper tree.
I know a sad little fairy KHALED HOSSEINI

She is furious with herself for her own stupidity. Opening herself up like this, voluntarily, to a l...
KHALED HOSSEINI

I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of...
KHALED HOSSEINI

He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms in...
KHALED HOSSEINI

But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not,...
KHALED HOSSEINI

The finger cut, to save the hand.
KHALED HOSSEINI

Kabul is... a thousand tragedies per square mile.
KHALED HOSSEINI

They say, Find a purpose in your 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.

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Khaled Hosseini

They say, Find a purpose in your 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.

Khaled Hosseini

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