For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda. — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
I lay no claim, it should be clear, to being a historian. So in my books, the intimate and personal have been intertwined inextricably with the broad and historical. — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
“Winter was every kid’s favorite season in Kabul, at least those whose fathers could afford to buy a good iron stove. The reason was simple: They shut down school for the icy season. Winter to me was the end of long division and naming the capital of Bulgaria, and the start of three months of playing cards by the stove… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share
“Their fights didn’t so much end as dissipate, like a drop of ink in a bowl of water, with a residual taint that lingered.” — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
“I think that everything he did, feeding the poor, giving money to friends in need, it was all a way of redeeming himself. And… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
“Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
“I pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I'd always feared they would.” — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
“shoes: that putting them on a bed invited death into the family, that a quarrel would follow if one put on the left shoe… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it's going to work.… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
Throughout the last century there were multiple attempts at giving Afghan women more autonomy, to change marriage laws, to abolish the practice of bride price and child marriage, and to enforce women to be involved in school. Every time, the reaction from the traditionalists was one of contempt and scorn and at times outright rebellion. I think the emancipation of… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share
At that moment, she cannot think of a more reckless, irrational thing than choosing to become a parent. — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
“He says this is war. There is no shame in war. Tell him he's wrong. War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more… — Khaled Hosseini Copy Share Image
