Quotes by Afghan Authors - Page 4

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.
Khaled Hosseini
Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us al, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting to set a touch-paper alight.
Tahir Shah
She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up into the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke silently on the people below- As a reminder of how women like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us
Khaled Hosseini
Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.
Tahir Shah
Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It's just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends.
Tahir Shah
When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety..."Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair... "What have I got to give you?"But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marveled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.
Khaled Hosseini
Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.
Khaled Hosseini
Can a mother commit a greater sin than ignoring her intuitions?
Nadia Hashimi
Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
Tahir Shah
The last thing we wanted was for the Machiguenga to be sad again. Sadness appeared to bring out their violence.
Tahir Shah
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 am glad that I can tell the truth, for lies are a form of theft; the liar steals from another person's trust. There are liars all over the world who have grown rich on the trust they have stolen.
Najaf Mazari
This “freedom” put a proud people in chainsAnd turned free men into slaves“Independence” made us weakAnd slaughtered usIn the name of kindnessThis is democracy by the whipAnd the fear of chainsWith a whirlwind at its core
Abdul Salam Zaeef
Stories are a communal currency of humanity.
Tahir Shah
In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that I will come to no harm.
Tahir Shah
Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.
Khaled Hosseini
Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.
Tahir Shah
During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.
Tahir Shah
There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.
Tahir Shah
The pain we feel in separation is the price we pay for love.
Hatef Mokhtar
In Morocco," said Osman, "word spreads like a fire tearing through the depths of Hell.
Tahir Shah
On a high mountain I stood, And cried the name of Ali, Lion of God.O Ali, Lion of God, King of Men, Bring joy to our sorrowful hearts.
Khaled Hosseini
Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of existence. Kites were the one paper-thin slice of intersection between those spheres.
Khaled Hosseini
Believe, and what was impossible becomes possible what at first was hidden becomes visible.
Tahir Shah
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
My journey to the land of the Shuar tribe had taught me the importance of practical gifts.
Tahir Shah
Some would call that lucky but lucky is relative
Nadia Hashimi
The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.
Tahir Shah
Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it.
Tahir Shah
It would be an existence rife with difficulties... but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heirloom.
Khaled Hosseini
A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché.
Khaled Hosseini
As far as Samson was concerned I was just another foreigner in pursuit of a lunatic quest.
Tahir Shah
There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
Khaled Hosseini
And that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.
Khaled Hosseini
You do not want to live in a country ruled by people who never have any doubts. To have doubts is human. A horse has no doubts, a grasshopper has no doubts, an ant has no doubts. But a human being stops to think sometimes, and when he thinks, he hears a voice asking quietly, 'Are you certain that you are right? You must be certain before you pull that trigger. You must be certain before you put your knife to that man's throat.'Would God have given us the power to question if he wanted us to behave like grasshoppers and ants? I am sure God takes pleasure in all the creatures of the world, but I am also sure that his greatest pleasure is a human being who puts his knife away because he is not sure, because a doubt has come into his mind.
Najaf Mazari
i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin.
Khaled Hosseini
It felt good to sit around and agree, to have a common enemy and a shared struggle. It felt good to be understood.
Nadia Hashimi
Normally I would have been the first to go in search of cannibal monks, particularly as I had heard of a similar tradition at a nunnery in the Philippines. It's the sort of quest I can't resist.
Tahir Shah
Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.
Khaled Hosseini
We had the kind of conversations that only great friends can ever share. They were touched with magic.
Tahir Shah
She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.
Khaled Hosseini
Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.
Tahir Shah
Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
Tahir Shah
For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home
Tahir Shah
Cornered mothers pray for strange things.
Nadia Hashimi
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
But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I'm not the one being arrested.
Tahir Shah
I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.
Khaled Hosseini
There's nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.
Tahir Shah
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
There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone.
Tahir Shah
You're gutless. It's how you were made. And that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you've never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is... God help him.
Khaled Hosseini
When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety. "What a scene you're making," Laila would say, releasing her to crawl toward Mariam. "What a scene! Calm down. Khala Mariam isn't going anywhere. There she is, your aunt. See? Go on, now." As soon as she was in Mariam's arms, Aziza's thumb shot into her mouth and she buried her face in Mariam's neck. Mariam bounced her stiffly, a half-bewildered, half-grateful smile on her lips. Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly.Aziza made Mariam want to weep."Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair. "Huh? I am nobody, don't you see? A dehati. What have I got to give you?"But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marvelled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.
Khaled Hosseini
Yes, well, people are very good at destroying things, good things.
Nadia Hashimi
Kabul fell prey to men who looked like they had tumbled out of their mothers with Kalashnikov in hand...
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
At times , he didn't understand the meaning of the Koran's words . But he said he liked the enhancing sounds the arabic words made as they rolled off his tongue . He said they comforted him , eased his heart . "They'll comfort you too . Mrariam jo , " he said . "You can summon then in your time of your need , and they won't fail you . God's words will never betray you , my girl . (pg.17)
Khaled Hosseini
These days no one challenges us,' he said. 'And because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we have all become lazy.
Tahir Shah
Do as you must -- you are not a child. But understand that there are many people willing to make your life more difficult. It is up to you to find a way to make things easier for yourself.
Nadia Hashimi
My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it.
Tahir Shah