Quotes by Afghan Authors - Page 5

The only thing they valued higher than ammunition were Man United footballs.
Tahir Shah
Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
Tahir Shah
In the world of the Machiguenga, sadness could be equated with anger, and anger was a perilous emotion, by which a foreigner could lose his life.
Tahir Shah
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
We need solitude, because when we're alone, we're free from obligations, we don't need to put on a show, and we can hear our own thoughts.
Tamim Ansary
A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand...well, God put a lot of thought in making you.
Khaled Hosseini
My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves.
Tahir Shah
As the head of an expedition, you can't pussyfoot around being polite to everyone. You have to show your teeth once in a while; a little growling goes a long way.
Tahir Shah
Only a man who has his health, a full stomach and wears clean clothes would ever entertain the notion of tracking down the greatest lost city on Earth.
Tahir Shah
Visit Cape Town and history is never far from your grasp. It lingers in the air, a scent on the breezy, an explanation of circumstance that shaped the Rainbow People. Stroll around the old downtown and it's impossible not to be affected by the trials and tribulations of the struggle. But, in many ways, it is the sense of triumph in the face of such adversity that makes the experience all the more poignant.
Tahir Shah
Settling into a new country is like getting used to a new pair of shoes. At first they pinch a little, but you like the way they look, so you carry on. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they become. Until one day without realizing it you reach a glorious plateau. Wearing those shoes is like wearing no shoes at all. The more scuffed they get, the more you love them and the more you can't imagine life without them.
Tahir Shah
War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace." - Baba
Khaled Hosseini
It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
Tahir Shah
What is gone is gone and will not come back. When the earth swallows, it swallows forever and we are left to stumble along feeling the absences. These are our burdens.
Nadia Hashimi
I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.
Khaled Hosseini
The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up.
Tahir Shah
Zendagi Migzara
Khaled Hosseini
Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency was but one. 
Khaled Hosseini
To be around family is to feel the possibility of growing roots again.
Nadia Hashimi
There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
Tahir Shah
A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.
Tahir Shah
Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. - Amir
Khaled Hosseini
It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. Sohrab's silence wasn't the self imposed silence of those with convictions, of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.
Khaled Hosseini
If there's a God out there, then i would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork.
Khaled Hosseini
Stories close the gap and reconcile between what we want life to be and how it actually is.
Khaled Hosseini
Running an expedition can bring out the worst in a man. It can make you a power-crazed monster.
Tahir Shah
I don't know if you have children of your own, Mariamjo, but if you do I pray that God look after them and spare you the grief that I have known. I still dream of them. I still dream of my dead children.I have dreams of you too, Mariam jo. I miss you. I miss the sound of your voice, your laughter. I miss reading to you, and all those times we fished together. Do you remember all those times we fished together? You were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and I cannot ever think of you without feeling shame and regret. Regret… When it comes to you, Mariamjo, I have oceans of it. I regret that I did not see you the day you came to Herat. I regret that I did not open the door and take you in. I regret that I did not make you a daughter to me, that l let you live in that place for all those years. And for what? Fear of losing face? Of staining my so called good name? How little those things matter to me now after all the loss, all the terrible things I have seen in this cursed war. But now, of course, it is too late. Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone. Now all I can do is say that you were a good daughter, Mariamjo, and that I never deserved you. Now all I can do is ask for your forgiveness. So forgive me, Mariamjo. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.
Khaled Hosseini
I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.
Tahir Shah
The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after tow minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.
Tahir Shah
The peacock's plumage is its enemy: O many the king who hath been slain by his magnificence!
Maulana Jalaluddin Mohammad Balkhi
I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.
Khaled Hosseini
I see you've confused what you're learning in school with actual education.
Khaled Hosseini
The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.
Tahir Shah
I was no longer troubled when he pulled out a machete in a crowded bar, tried to pick up schoolgirls, or threatened to scalp us, then rip off our heads and scoop out our brains.
Tahir Shah
In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough.
Tahir Shah
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
The ability to tell a good route from a terrible one is a valuable skill when leading an expedition. Unfortunately for us all, it was a skill I did not possess.
Tahir Shah
The ants are bad" The Bear"the ants?"Tahir"Do not be fooled. They look very small, so harm you don't think of then at all. Then years. Then one day you wake up, and your home has fallen down." Osman.
Tahir Shah
Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity.
Tahir Shah
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
Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed.
Tahir Shah
A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation
Tahir Shah
The first few hours in the cell were quite stimulating. I'd never been in a prison cell before and was quite enjoying the experience.
Tahir Shah
I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.
Khaled Hosseini
As children inch their way into adolescence, the parent changes. He is an authority, a source of answers, and a chastising voice. Depending on the day, he may be resented, emulated, questioned, or defied.Only as an adult can a child imagine his parent as a whole person, as a husband, a brother, or a son. Only then can a child see how his parent fits into the world beyond four walls. Saleem had only bits and pieces of his father, mostly the memories of a young boy. He would spend the rest of his life, he knew, trying to reconstruct his father with the scraps he could recall or gather from his mother.
Nadia Hashimi
In some warped way, having an embalmed body with us made perfect sense.
Tahir Shah
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
Her beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head.
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
Mammy was soon asleep, leaving Laila with dueling emotions: reassured that Mammy meant to live on, stung that she was not the reason. She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.
Khaled Hosseini
The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
Tahir Shah
Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food.
Khaled Hosseini
it is a heartBreaking sound, Amir Jan, the Wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you Never hear it.
Khaled Hosseini
My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
Tahir Shah
Time spent in India has a extraordinary effect on one. It acts as a barrier that makes the rest of the world seem unreal.
Tahir Shah
That's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does.
Khaled Hosseini
The situation was different in the jungle. Every inch of ground had to be earned, and was done so through much exertion with the blade.
Tahir Shah
Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. 'It wasn't meant to be', Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.
Khaled Hosseini