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

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, Stupid, Random, Sadness, End, Care

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, Childhood, Brother, Flying, Down

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

Life, Family, Live, Simple, Enjoy

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, Women, Daily, Daily Life, Children

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

Culture, War, People, Said, Country

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

People, Connections, Find, Meaning, Most

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

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

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, Trying, You

Top 10
Khaled Hosseini
Quotes

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, Now, Way, Country, Go, Up

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. To be a writer - this may seem trite, I realize - you have to actually write. Khaled Hosseini

People, Book, You, Say, Never, Realize

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, Yourself, Brother, You, Uncle

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

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, Thoughts, Universe, World, Street

I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well. Khaled Hosseini

Father, Society, Strong, Child, Up, Well

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

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

The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again. Khaled Hosseini

Experience, Writing, Energy, Think, Back

A doctor in a hospital told me that when the mujaheddin were fighting in the early Nineties, he often performed amputations and Caesarean sections without anesthesia because there were no supplies. Khaled Hosseini

Doctor, Me, Fighting, Early, Hospital

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

Hate, Feel, Resting, Restless, Working

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, Understand

I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift. Khaled Hosseini

Gift, Nothing, More, Like, Give, Receive

Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval. Khaled Hosseini

Live, People, Conservative, Nation, Out

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, I Am, People, Random, Born, Go

The strange dilemma of the 'ethnic-fiction' writer is that you are supposed to carry a banner for your homeland, be a voice for it, and educate the rest of the world about it, but I think that's far too onerous a burden for any writer to bear. Khaled Hosseini

Rest, World, Voice, Think, You, Strange

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