Quotes From "And The Mountains Echoed" By Khaled Hosseini

I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it did not care a whit about the hopes and reams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that. Khaled Hosseini

You say you have no courage, but i see it in you. what you did, the burden you agreed to shoulder, took courage. for that, i honor you. Khaled Hosseini

He used to wonder how such a frail little body could house so much joy, so much goodness. It couldn't. It spilled out of her, came pouring out her eyes. Khaled Hosseini

She will not plant the seed in their mind, that a parent is capable of abandoning her children, of saying to them You are not enough. For Pari, the children and Eric have always been enough. They always will be. Khaled Hosseini

I see a creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly. Khaled Hosseini

I would have told them that he lived a life lacking in purpose or direction. Like those aimless rides I took him on. A life lived from the backseat, observed as it blurred by. An indifferent life. Khaled Hosseini

Once, when I was little, I asked her if she’d cried when my father had fallen to his death. At the funeral? I mean, the burial? No, I did not. Because you weren’t sad? Because it was nobody’s business if I was. Khaled Hosseini

A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bare to lose. Khaled Hosseini

I want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin. Khaled Hosseini

I've crossed paths since with men like him. I wish I could say differently. But I have. And what I have learned is that you dig a little and you find they're all the same, give or take. Some are more polished, granted. They may come with a little bit of charm-- Or a lot -- and that can fool you. But really they're all unhappy little boys sloshing around in their own rage. They feel wronged. They haven't been given their due. No one loved them enough. Of course they expect you to love them. They want to be held, rocked, reassured. But it's a mistake to give it to them. They can't accept it. They can't accept the very thing they're needing. They end up hating you for it. And it never ends because they can't hate you enough. It never ends-- the misery, the apologies, the promises, the reneging, the wretchedness of it all. My first husband was like that. . Khaled Hosseini

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too? Khaled Hosseini

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

What began with exuberance and passion always ended with terse accusations and hateful words, with rage and weeping fits. Khaled Hosseini

War. Or, rather, wars. Not one, not two, but many wars, both big and small, just and unjust, wars with shifting casts of supposed heroes and villains, each new hero making one increasingly nostalgic for the old villain. The names changed, as did the faces, and I spit on them equally for all the petty feuds, the snipers, the land mines, bombing raids, the rockets, the looting and raping and killing. . Khaled Hosseini

He thought about his long life and gave thanks for all the bounty and joy that he had been given. To want more, to wish for yet more, he knew, would be petty. He sighed happily, and listened to the wind sweeping down from the mountains, to the chirping of night birds. Khaled Hosseini

Soon, he would become an adult. And when he did, there would be not going back because adulthood was akin to what his father had once said about being a war hero: one you became one, you died one. Khaled Hosseini

She was my mother and she would not leave me. This I had simply accepted and expected. I had no more thanked her for it than i did the sun for shining on me. Khaled Hosseini

Her beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head. Khaled Hosseini

Mother is fading for him, her face receding into shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from a fist. Khaled Hosseini

Mamà believed in loyalty above all, even at the cost of self-denial. She also believed it was always best to tell the truth, to tell it plainly, without fanfare, and the more disagreeable the truth, the sooner you had to tell it. Khaled Hosseini

Kabul fell prey to men who looked like they had tumbled out of their mothers with Kalashnikov in hand... Khaled Hosseini

Who rebels with mathematics? Khaled Hosseini

These random unkind moment that catch you wen you least expect them. Khaled Hosseini

The cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet - they all begin to blur. I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to. Khaled Hosseini

They say, find a purpose in 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. And now that I had fulfilled mine, I felt aimless and adrift Khaled Hosseini

They rarely look at Baba -- the teenagers -- and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him. Khaled Hosseini