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Quotes from A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khaled Hosseini

b. 1965 Afghanistan

← All quotes by Khaled Hosseini

20 quotes

It always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of the drunk.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

The Chinese say it is better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Regret...when it comes to you, I have oceans of it.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Women have always had it hard in this country, Laila, but they're probably more free now, under the communists, and have more rights than they've ever had before.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Laila (at fourteen years): What would your mother say when she saw you smoke?

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Nana (to Mariam): When I'm gone, you'll have nothing in this world. You are nothing!

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Tariq (meeting Laila after ten years): It's good to see you, Laila.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

I am tired and I am dying, and I want to be merciful. I want to forgive you. But when God summons me and says, But it wasn't for you to forgive, Mullah, what shall I say?

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Maybe it was senseless to want to be near a person so badly here in a country where bullets had shredded her own brothers to pieces. But all Laila had to do was picture Tariq going at Khadim with his leg and then nothing in the world seemed more sensible to her.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. -Nana

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

What good is it? All this, what good is it? -Mariam

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

And that, my young friends, is the story of our country, one invader after another. Macedonians. Sassanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Laila: Tell your secrets to the wind but don't blame it for telling the trees.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Mariam: I can't believe what you are now, if you were a Benz before.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Hasina: That's because you have a beard, my dear.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

And I wrote to you, Laila. Volumes. -

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

She was leaving the world as woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

*Mariam is having a flashback*

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

It wasn't easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults, his walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat. But after four years of marriage, Mariam saw clearly how much a woman could tolerate when she was afraid. And Mariam was afraid.

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Khaled Hosseini (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.