Khaled Hosseini Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Khaled Hosseini Quotes. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!

1
Whatever the readers feel when they’re reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I’m writing it.
Khaled Hosseini
2
I am always revolted when Islamic leaders, from Afghanistan or elsewhere, deny the very existence of female oppression, avoid the issue by pointing to examples of what they view as Western mistreatment of women, or even worse, justify the oppression of women on the basis of notions derived from Sharia law.
Khaled Hosseini
3
Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves – their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.
Khaled Hosseini
4
Afghan people are just so tired of war.
Khaled Hosseini
5
There isn’t, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry.
Khaled Hosseini
6
A Western-style democracy in Afghanistan is a dream. I don’t see that as a reality anytime soon. But I think some form of representative political process is not that far-fetched.
Khaled Hosseini
7
You don’t need a cheerleader. That’s the worst thing that can happen to you.
Khaled Hosseini
8
A doctor in a hospital told me that when the mujaheddin were fighting in the early Nineties, he often performed amputations and Caesarean sections without anesthesia because there were no supplies.
Khaled Hosseini
9
American high school culture was impenetrable to me, and very cliquey: you had the Hispanics, the African Americans, the surfer guys and the goths and the immigrants. The jocks and the surfers got the girls. By the time I’d got to grips with it, I’d graduated.
Khaled Hosseini
10
Everything for me starts very small and snowballs. So I rarely start with the grand idea and find a place for it and narrow down. It’s, really, just start small, and as I’m writing it, I begin to see – sometimes to my own surprise – what’s unfolding and what’s blooming.
Khaled Hosseini
11
I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.
Khaled Hosseini
12
I hear from non-Afghan immigrants – Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs in France – all the time. These people have had to redefine their lives, which is what my family went through when we came to the U.S. in 1980.
Khaled Hosseini
13
I’m glad I wrote them when I did because I think if I were to write my first novel now, it would be a different book, and it may not be the book that everybody wants to read. But if I were given a red pen now, and I went back… I’d take that thing apart.
Khaled Hosseini
14
The strange dilemma of the ‘ethnic-fiction’ writer is that you are supposed to carry a banner for your homeland, be a voice for it, and educate the rest of the world about it, but I think that’s far too onerous a burden for any writer to bear.
Khaled Hosseini
15
I was good at being a doctor; my patients liked me. At times people trust you with things they wouldn’t tell their spouses. It was a real privilege.
Khaled Hosseini
16
Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it’s very, very conservative, very tribal – almost medieval.
Khaled Hosseini
17
I’ve learned things about the craft of writing and about structuring a book and about character development and so on that I’ve just learned on the fly.
Khaled Hosseini
18
Obama’s middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah, too? Do McCain and Palin think there’s something wrong with my name?
Khaled Hosseini
19
I will say that there is an inordinate amount of medicine in my novels, especially the first one. There are a lot of medical things that happen. A hip fracture, three different kinds of lung cancer, pneumonia, blood poisoning, and so on.
Khaled Hosseini
20
You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And yet, by the time this idea passes through the different filters of your mind, and into your hand, and onto the page or computer screen – it becomes distorted, and it’s been diminished.
Khaled Hosseini
21
The deal is such that when I begin writing something, I open a door, and those characters come in, and then they won’t leave, and so I live with them every day, all day. They are there with me when I’m driving my kids to school, when I’m standing in line at the grocery store.
Khaled Hosseini
22
I have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader.
Khaled Hosseini
23
Life just doesn’t care about our aspirations, or sadness. It’s often random, and it’s often stupid and it’s often completely unexpected, and the closures and the epiphanies and revelations we end up receiving from life, begrudgingly, rarely turn out to be the ones we thought.
Khaled Hosseini
24
I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift.
Khaled Hosseini
25
I don’t listen to music when I write – I find it distracting.
Khaled Hosseini
26
The experience of writing ‘The Kite Runner’ is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.
Khaled Hosseini
27
You have to be able to interact with people whose politics you disagree with.
Khaled Hosseini
28
Afghanistan is doomed if women are barred once again from public life.
Khaled Hosseini
29
Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history.
Khaled Hosseini
30
I don’t remember how I picked up ‘Different Seasons,’ but it was a book I read on a grave shift. I was absolutely floored by it; ‘The Body,’ a story about kids who go searching for a corpse in the woods, impacted me especially.
Khaled Hosseini
31
I lay no claim, it should be clear, to being a historian. So in my books, the intimate and personal have been intertwined inextricably with the broad and historical.
Khaled Hosseini
32
Writing for me is largely about rewriting.
Khaled Hosseini
33
I have a particular disdain for Islamic extremism, and of course, in both ‘The Kite Runner’ and ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ that’s obvious.
Khaled Hosseini
34
I read actual physical books and have thus far avoided the electronic lure.
Khaled Hosseini
35
I’m so fascinated by how people destroy each other and love each other.
Khaled Hosseini
36
When I went to Kabul – weeks after I finished ‘The Kite Runner’ – I met a lot of people from all walks of life: men, women, children, people from ministries, hotel doormen, shopkeepers. And I learned from them what daily life was like when the rockets were flying overhead.
Khaled Hosseini
37
The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems.
Khaled Hosseini
38
I have met so many people who say they’ve got a book in them, but they’ve never written a word.
Khaled Hosseini
39
Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.
Khaled Hosseini
40
I was told bedtime stories by my father or my grandmother. Books, I mostly read on my own in bed.
Khaled Hosseini
41
Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it’s either before or after they’ve blown something up.
Khaled Hosseini
42
Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It’s something I’ve revisited a few times in my writings.
Khaled Hosseini
43
In Afghanistan, you don’t understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself.
Khaled Hosseini
44
All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I’ve ever written was because I don’t have a choice. I write stories because I can’t wait to tell it, I can’t wait to see how it ends.
Khaled Hosseini
45
My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters.
Khaled Hosseini
46
The only two places where I can read for long stretches are in airplanes and in bed at nighttime.
Khaled Hosseini
47
You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not.
Khaled Hosseini
48
I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S.
Khaled Hosseini
49
You must not believe your own PR; it would be grotesque.
Khaled Hosseini
50
My books never go where I think they’re going.
Khaled Hosseini
51
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
52
I’m fascinated by the way early experiences haunt and revisit you, remain present in your life for decades and decades – they can even shape who you ultimately become.
Khaled Hosseini
53
I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well.
Khaled Hosseini
54
I landed in Kabul the day before Shock and Awe in Iraq, and you could all but hear the collective groan.
Khaled Hosseini
55
I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I’ve never had any formal training in writing.
Khaled Hosseini
56
Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.
Khaled Hosseini
57
To me, families are puzzles that take a lifetime to work out – or not, as often is the case – and I like to explore how people within them try to connect, be it through love, duty, or circumstance.
Khaled Hosseini
58
In many parts of the world, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need women to solve the problems that men create.
Khaled Hosseini
59
It’s a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don’t like to be in the public light all that much. I don’t crave the whole fame thing at all.
Khaled Hosseini
60
Syria’s neighboring countries cannot and should not carry the cost of caring for refugees on their own. The international community must share the burden with them by providing economic aid, investing in development in those countries, and opening their own borders to desperate Syrian families looking for protection.
Khaled Hosseini
61
My wife is my in-home editor and reads everything I write.
Khaled Hosseini
62
Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.
Khaled Hosseini
63
Read the kinds of things you want to write; read the kinds of things you would never write. Learn something from every writer you read.
Khaled Hosseini
64
In my 20s, life seemed endless. At 49, I’ve had a chance to see how dark life can be, and I am far more aware of the constraints of time than when I wrote ‘The Kite Runner.’ I realise there is only a limited number of things I can do.
Khaled Hosseini
65
For a novelist, it’s kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.
Khaled Hosseini
66
I would like people to have an appreciation for what happened to women under the Taliban, as in ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns.’ I hope they get a sense of how connected we all are.
Khaled Hosseini