Quote

If the story had been about anyone else, it would been dismissed as laaf, that Afghan tendency to exaggerate ---sadly, almost a national affliction if someone bragged that his son was a doctor, chances were the kid had once passed a biology test in high school.

Khaled Hosseini

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Khaled Hosseini
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: March 4
Medical Writer
Novelist
Physician
Physician Writer
Writer
Cabool
School
High
Doctor
Exaggerate
Would
Anyone
Passed
Afghan
Chance
Test
Sadly
Story
Tests
Affliction
Else
Doctors
Biology
Kids
Son
Chances
Someone
National
Tendency
Bragged
Stories
Almost
Tendencies
Dismissed

More quotes by Khaled Hosseini

Image
It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
You have these crops of poppies that supply something like 90% of the heroin sold in Europe and actually represents more than half of the Afghanistan's GDP.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
My father and I did work for a while at the flea market and there really are rows of Afghans working there, some of whom I am related to.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies, and sometimes not.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
The story of what has happened to women in Afghanistan, however, is a very important one, and fertile ground for fiction.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I found myself sitting at the computer, and I thought I was going to write a kind of simple nostalgic story about two boys and their love of kite fighting. But stories have a will of their own, and this one turned out to be this dark tale about betrayal, loss, regret. The short story which was about 25 pages long sat around for a couple of years.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
For many people in the west, Afghanistan is synonymous with the Soviet war and the Taliban. I wanted to remind people that Afghans had managed to live in peaceful anonymity for decades, that the history of the Afghans in the twentieth century has been largely pacific and harmonious.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
In 2004, I took a one year sabbatical to finish my second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. At the end of that year, I was not done with my book, and had to in effect resign from work. I did. I never went back.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
But if you have a book that needs urgent reading,' she said, 'then Hakim is your man.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock. And
Khaled Hosseini
Image
You say their stories, it is gift they give you.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cannot see. After that, she does not look back anymore. She knows that if she does, she will weaken.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
All good things in life are fragile and easily lost
Khaled Hosseini
Image
If you connect emotionally with the plight of those characters, ou feel what they feel and you walk away with a sense of understanding and empathy, and hopefully, something has been illuminated for you. And I tink that's what happendd for a lot of readers with my novels.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
[Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns] is not just unique to books, but films and music.
Khaled Hosseini
Image
If my book generates any sort of dialogue among Afghans, then I think it will have done a service to the community.
Khaled Hosseini