Khaled Hosseini Quotes

Afghani - Novelist Born: March 4, 1965

Qualities 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

Life, Perseverance, Patience, Faith, End

I'm a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ordinary things. Khaled Hosseini

Family, Life, Live, Simple, Enjoy

Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves - their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles. Khaled Hosseini

War, Culture, People, Traditions, Said

I spent a lot of winters in my childhood flying kites with my brother, with my cousins, with friends in the neighborhood. It's what we did in the winter. Schools close down. There was not much to do. Khaled Hosseini

Winter, Brother, Childhood, Flying, Down

Syria's neighboring countries cannot and should not carry the cost of caring for refugees on their own. The international community must share the burden with them by providing economic aid, investing in development in those countries, and opening their own borders to desperate Syrian families looking for protection. Khaled Hosseini

Community, Caring, Looking, Opening, Own

Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts, and insights, and feelings. But every person is crippled in his or her own way by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world. Khaled Hosseini

Ocean, World, Thoughts, Universe, Street

Life just doesn't care about our aspirations, or sadness. It's often random, and it's often stupid and it's often completely unexpected, and the closures and the epiphanies and revelations we end up receiving from life, begrudgingly, rarely turn out to be the ones we thought. Khaled Hosseini

Life, End, Stupid, Random, Sadness, Care

In Afghanistan, you don't understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself. Khaled Hosseini

Son, Brother, Yourself, Uncle, You

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess. Khaled Hosseini

Time, Impossible, Story, You, Trying

The Taliban's acts of cultural vandalism - the most infamous being the destruction of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas - had a devastating effect on Afghan culture and the artistic scene. The Taliban burned countless films, VCRs, music tapes, books, and paintings. They jailed filmmakers, musicians, painters, and sculptors. Khaled Hosseini

Music, Culture, Musicians, Destruction

Top 10
Khaled Hosseini
Quotes

When I go to Afghanistan, I realize I've been spared, due to a random genetic lottery, by being born to people who had the means to get out. Every time I go to Afghanistan I am haunted by that. Khaled Hosseini

Time, People, I Am, Random, Born, Go

When I went to Kabul - weeks after I finished 'The Kite Runner' - I met a lot of people from all walks of life: men, women, children, people from ministries, hotel doormen, shopkeepers. And I learned from them what daily life was like when the rockets were flying overhead. Khaled Hosseini

Life, Children, Women, Daily, Men, Hotel

People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections. Khaled Hosseini

People, Connections, Find, Meaning, Most

Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions. Khaled Hosseini

Life, Time, Action, Long, Consequences

I hate resting. I feel restless. My preference is to be working. Khaled Hosseini

Hate, Feel, Resting, Working, Restless

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. Khaled Hosseini

College, Training, School, World, Never

My 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

Life, Love, Good, Future, Happiness, Me

Writing for me is largely about rewriting. Khaled Hosseini

Writing, Me, About, Rewriting, Largely

In my 20s, life seemed endless. At 49, I've had a chance to see how dark life can be, and I am far more aware of the constraints of time than when I wrote 'The Kite Runner.' I realise there is only a limited number of things I can do. Khaled Hosseini

Life, Time, I Am, Chance, Dark, I Can

It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all. Khaled Hosseini

Life, Light, Fame, You, Cherish, Nice

I have a particular disdain for Islamic extremism, and of course, in both 'The Kite Runner' and 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' that's obvious. Khaled Hosseini

Kite, Obvious, Thousand, Extremism, Both

Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history. Khaled Hosseini

History, Women, Suffering, World, Think

Family is so central to Afghan life that all Afghan stories are family stories. Family is something I simply can't resist because all the great themes of human life - duty, grief, sacrifice, love, envy - you find all those things within families. Khaled Hosseini

Family, Life, Love, Great, Grief, Envy

One of the things novels should do is shine a light on those parts of us that are common, the fibres that connect all of us. They should convey the sense that we're all connected, coming from the same tree, sharing common roots. Khaled Hosseini

Light, Tree, Shine, Roots, Sharing, Us

I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter. Khaled Hosseini

Family, Learning, Moment, School, Book

My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal. Khaled Hosseini

Memories, Country, Years, Conservative

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