For you, a thousand times over’
Catalog
Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini (Persian: خالد حسینی‎‎ [ˈxɒled hoˈsejni]; /ˈhɑːlɛd hoʊˈseɪni/; born March 4, 1965) is an Afghan-born American novelist and physician. After graduating from college, he worked as a doctor in California, an occupation that he likened to "an arranged marriage." He has published three novels, most notably his 2003 debut The Kite Runner, all of which are at least partially set in Afghanistan and feature an Afghan as the protagonist. Following the success of The Kite Runner he retired from medicine to write full-time. Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father worked as a diplomat, and when Hosseini was 11 years old, the family moved to France; four years later, they applied for asylum in the United States, where he later became a citizen. Hosseini did not return to Afghanistan until 2001 at the age of 36, where he "felt like a tourist in [his] own country". In interviews about the experience, he admitted to sometimes feeling survivor's guilt for having been able to leave the country before the Soviet invasion and subsequent wars. All three of his novels became bestsellers: The Kite Runner spent 101 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, four of them at number one. A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) was a Times Best Seller for 103 weeks, 15 at number one. And the Mountains Echoed (2013) debuted near the top of the Times list and remained on it for 33 weeks until January 201
I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.
This fragile, trembling glimpse of how it could have been between us. All it will beget is regret, I tell myself, and what good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.
'Do you have a camera?' Thalia said. 'No.' 'Have you ever taken a picture?' 'No.' 'And you want to be a photographer?' 'You find that strange?' 'A little.' 'So if I said I wanted to be a policeman, you'd think that was strange too? Because I've never slapped handcuffs on anyone?'
A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose.
All good things in life are fragile and easily lost.
I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately, intensely, and without recourse.
I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.
You say you have no courage, but I see it in you.
I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.
How afraid I am to be free despite my frequent desire for it.
I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to.
It’s a funny thing… but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they’re afraid of. What they don’t want.
She was an extraordinary woman, and I went to bed that night feeling like I was perhaps more than ordinary myself. This was the effect she had on me.
You have to do it now. If you wait until morning, you'll lose heart.
That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.
I suspect the truth is we are waiting, all of us, against unsurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.
For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose.
All good things in life are fragile and easily lost.
It's a funny thing... but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want.