A Thousand Splendid Suns Quotes

“it always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of the drunk.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“المرء لا يستطيع عد الأقمار المشعة على سقوفها ،،
أو الألف شمس المشرقة التي تختبئ خلف جدرانها !!”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person has to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“... 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, Mariam jo, 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 I 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 that 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, Mariam jo, and that I never deserved you. Now all I can do is ask for your forgiveness. So forgive me, Mariam jo. Forgive me, forgive me. Forgive me...”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for most part has been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“حتى الشخص الملدوغ من أفعى يستطيع النوم، ولكن ليس الجائع”
― خالد حسيني, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.
At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar."
"Titanic City" was born.

It's the song, they said.
No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.
It's the sex, they whispered.
Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo.
"Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Marriage can wait. Education cannot...Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“قالت نانا : تعلّمي هذا الآن وتعلّميه جيداً يا ابنتي .. كما إبرة البوصلة تشير إلى الشمال .. فإن إصبع الرجل يجد دائماً امرأة ليتهمها .. تذكري ذلك يا مريم!”
― خالد حسيني, ألف شمس ساطعة

“At times, he didn't understand the meaning of the Koran's words. But he said he liked the enhancing sounds the Arabic words made as they rolled off his tongue. He said they comforted him, eased his heart. "They'll comfort you to . Mariam jo," he said. "You can summon then in your time of your need, and they won't fail you. God's words will never betray you, my girl.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I’ll die if you go. The Jinn will come, and I’ll have one of my fits. You’ll see, I’ll swallow my tongue and die. Don’t leave me, Mariam jo. Please stay. I’ll die if you go.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I will use a flower petal for paper,
And write you the sweetest letter,
You are the sultan of my heart,
Sultan of my heart.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I’m all you have in this world Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You ARE nothing!”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“لا يخيفني أن أغادر هذه الحياة, التي غادرها ابني الوحيد منذ خمس سنوات مضت, هذه الحياة تصر على أن نحمل حزنا فوق حزن حتى نصبح غير قادرين على التحمل أكثر, أعتقد أنه يجب ان اغادر بسعادة أكثر حينما يحين الوقت”
― خالد حسيني, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“You know the old bit," he said. "You're on a deserted island. You can have five books. Which do you choose? I never thought I'd actually have to.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“ما أغنى هذه الأكاذيب ،،رجل غنيّ يخبر أكاذيب غنيّة ،،!”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“بعض الأوقات، تغيرات تموضع الصخور تكون عميقة، عميقة في الأسفل، فتصبح هذه التغيرات قوية ومخيفة في الأسفل هناك، ولكن كل ما نشعر به على السطح هو الإهتزاز البسيط. فقط إهتزاز بسيط.”
― خالد حسيني, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“But Mariam hardly noticed, hardly cared...the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that Love was a damaging mistake and its accomplice, Hope, a treacherous illusion.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety...

"Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair... "What have I got to give you?"

But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marveled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Her beauty was the talk of the valley.It skipped two generations of women in our family, but it sure didn't bypass you, Laila.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a 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. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.

Mariam's final thoughts were a few words from the Koran, which she muttered under her breath.

He has created the heavens and the earth with the truth; He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night, and He has made the sun and the moon subservient; each one runs on to an assigned term; now surely He is the Mighty, the Great Forgiver.

"Kneel," the Talib said.

O my Lord! Forgive and have mercy, for you are the best of the merciful ones.

"Kneel here, hamshira. And look down."

One last time, Mariam did as she was told.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“ما يخيفني هامشيرا هو اليوم الذي يستدعيني فيه الله لأقف أمامه ويسألني ’ لماذا لم تفعل كما أمرت , مللا ؟ لماذا لم تطع أمري ؟ كيف سأشرح نفسي له, هامشيرا ماهو دفاعي لعدم إحترام اوامره؟”
― خالد حسيني, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Only two weeks since he had left, and it was already happening. Time, blunting the edges of those sharp memories. Laila bore down mentally. What had he said? It seemed vital, suddenly, that she know.

Laila closed her eyes. Concentrated.

With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when Laila would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by Tariq's name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion—like the phantom pain of an amputee.

Except every once in a long while, when Laila was a grown woman, ironing a shirt or pushing her children on a swing set, something trivial, maybe the warmth of a carpet beneath her feet on a hot day or the curve of a stranger's forehead, would set off a memory of that afternoon together. And it would come rushing back. The spontaneity of it. Their astonishing imprudence...

It would flood her, steal her breath.

But then it would pass. The moment would pass. Leave her feeling deflated, feeling noting but a vague restlessness.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“But if you have a book that needs urgent reading,' she said, 'then Hakim is your man.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“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, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Inside Laila too a battle was being waged : guilt on one side, partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction that what she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had been natural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by the knowledge that they might never see each other again.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Laila remembered how Mammy had dropped to the ground, how she’d screamed, torn at her hair. But Laila couldn’t even manage that. She could hardly move. She could hardly move a muscle.
She sat on the chair instead, hands limp in her lap, eyes staring at nothing, and let her mind fly on. She let it fly on until it found the place, the good and safe place, where the barley fields were green, where the water ran clear and the cottonwood seeds danced by the thousands in the air; where Babi was reading a book beneath an acacia and Tariq was napping with his hands laced across his chest, and where she could dip her feet in the stream and dream good dreams beneath the watchful gaze of gods of ancient, sun-bleached rock.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a 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. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns