Khaled Hosseini Quotes About Afghanistan

Quotes about: Afghanistan

• It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting. - Amir

  Khaled Hosseini

  Spring, Snow, Bird

  Khaled Hosseini (2010). “The Complete Khaled Hosseini: Digital box set”, p.168, A&C Black

• When I was in Afghanistan in 2007, I went from village to village where refugees had returned, and they were living out in the open under tents, sometimes completely exposed to the environment. And they were homeless, which meant they would lose children in the winter to the cold and in the summers in the extreme heat. It's extremely humiliating for them to be homeless, culturally it's very shameful.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Summer, Children, Winter

  "Web Exclusive Interview: Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini to Speak on Refugee Crisis at Event in Lafayette". Interview with Pete Crooks, www.diablomag.com. April 2009.

• ‎I know you're still young but I want you to understand and learn this now. Marriage can wait, education cannot. You're a very very bright girl. Truly you are. You can be anything you want Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated Laila. No chance.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Girl, War, Smart

  Khaled Hosseini (2010). “The Complete Khaled Hosseini: Digital box set”, p.242, A&C Black

• When I went to Afghanistan in 2003, I walked into a war zone. Entire neighborhoods had been demolished. There were an overwhelming number of widows and orphans and people who had been physically and emotionally damaged; every 10-year-old kid on the street knew how to dismantle a Kalashnikov in under a minute. I would flip through math textbooks intended for third grade, fourth grade, and they would include word problems such as, "If you have 100 grenades and 20 mujahideen, how many grenades per mujahideen do you get?" War has infiltrated every facet of life.

  Khaled Hosseini

  War, Kids, Math

  "Khaled Hosseini, Kabul’s Splendid Son". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May/June 2009.

• 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

  Europe, Gdp, Half

  Source: www.diablomag.com

• My family left Afghanistan in 1976, well before the Communist coup and the Soviet invasion. We certainly thought we would be going back. But when we saw those Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan, the prospect for return looked very dim. Few of us, I have to say, envisioned that nearly a quarter century of bloodletting would follow.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Tanks, Rolling, Would Be

  Interview with Razeshta Sethna, newslinemagazine.com. November, 2003.

• There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Children, Childhood, Littles

  Khaled Hosseini (2010). “The Complete Khaled Hosseini: Digital box set”, p.145, A&C Black

• I brought Hassan’s son from Afghanistan to America, lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty

  Khaled Hosseini

  Son, America, Hassan

  Khaled Hosseini (2010). “The Complete Khaled Hosseini: Digital box set”, p.162, A&C Black

• Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Kids, Independent, Good Luck

  Khaled Hosseini (2011). “The Kite Runner: Rejacketed”, p.45, A&C Black

• Baba dropped the stack of food stamps on her desk. "Thank you but I don't want," Baba said. "I work always. In Afghanistan I work, in America I work. Thank you very much, Mrs. Dobbins, but I don't like it free money."...Baba walked out of the welfare office like a man cured of a tumor.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Men, America, Office

• When I go to Afghanistan, I realize I've been spared, due to a random genetic lottery, by being born to people who had the means to get out. Every time I go to Afghanistan I am haunted by that.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Mean, People, Realizing

  "Khaled Hosseini: The Threads That Connect Us" by Khaled Hosseini, www.shelf-awareness.com.

• I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

  Khaled Hosseini

  War, Robots, Mars

  Khaled Hosseini (2010). “The Complete Khaled Hosseini: Digital box set”, p.122, A&C Black

• Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile. Never mind any of those things. Because history isn't easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi'a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Boys, Chinese, Mind

  Khaled Hosseini (2004). “The Kite Runner”, p.31, Penguin

• 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

  Writing, Literature, Tradition

  Interview with James Mustich, www.csmonitor.com. November 24, 2008.

• For a novelist, it’s kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. That said, I’m in a unique position to speak on behalf of Afghanistan on certain issues that I feel are important, particularly the issue of Afghan refugees.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Unique, Issues, Important

  "Khaled Hosseini, Kabul’s Splendid Son". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. May, 2009.

• I think the changes that have happened, there have been come positive, but by and large, you have to say the changes have been negative. The situation has reached a fairly critical stage in Afghanistan.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Thinking, Negative, Stage

  "Web Exclusive Interview: Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini to Speak on Refugee Crisis at Event in Lafayette". Interview with Peter Crooks, www.diablomag.com. April 25, 2009.

• I started a foundation, called The Khaled Hosseini Foundation. The mission has been to help the most vulnerable groups in Afghanistan. So the focus has been on women, children, and homeless refugees, most of whom are in fact women and children.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Children, Focus, Foundation

  "GeekDad Interview: Khaled Hosseini, Author of The Kite Runner". Interview with Tony Sims, www.wired.com. September 30, 2011.

• I returned to Kabul after a 27-year absence. I came away with some optimism but not as much as I had hoped for. The two major issues in Afghanistan are a lack of security outside Kabul (particularly in the south and east) and the powerful warlords ruling over the provinces with little or no allegiance to the central government. The other rapidly rising concern is the narcotic trade which, if not dealt with, may turn Afghanistan into another Bolivia or Colombia.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Powerful, Years, Two

• 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

  People, Conservative, Medieval

  "Khaled Hosseini, Kabul’s Splendid Son". Interview with Michael Machanic, www.motherjones.com. May/June, 2009.

• The warlords took part in atrocities during the civil war in Afghanistan. They looted, they raped, they killed. They have become incredibly empowered and entrenched. They live in mansions, they have jobs in the government, and they're incredibly powerful. In Kabul, people don't want to speak about it too publicly, because these people are essentially like Tony Soprano.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Jobs, Powerful, War

• You have think tanks like the widely respected Atlantic Council that have published reports in the past year that have called Afghanistan a failing state.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Past, Thinking, Years

  "Web Exclusive Interview: Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini to Speak on Refugee Crisis at Event in Lafayette". Interview with Peter Crooks, www.diablomag.com. April 2009.

• The bulk of our efforts [in The Khaled Hosseini Foundation] has focused on helping build permanent shelters for returning refugees who are homeless, living out in the open or in makeshift homes. This is an area of urgent need as Afghanistan's natural elements are quite harsh, with very hot summers, and freezing winters.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Summer, Home, Winter

  Source: www.wired.com

• Equally important is the lack of cultivable land for farmers, a profound problem when you take into account that Afghanistan has always largely been an agricultural country, and that even before the wars destroyed lands and irrigation canals, only 5 per cent of the land was cultivable.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Country, War, Land

  Interview with Razeshta Sethna, newslinemagazine.com. November, 2003.

• 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

  Cousin, Brother, Uncles

  "Khaled Hosseini: 'If I could go back now, I'd take The Kite Runner apart'". Interview with Hermione Hoby, www.theguardian.com. June 01, 2013.

• Michael Bealmear is a philanthropist, and he has become interested in the issue of refugees, and he proposed that we do an event in his community, where we could dedicate an entire evening focused on the global refugee crisis, focused primarily on Afghanistan.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Refugee Crisis, Issues, Community

  "Web Exclusive Interview: Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini to Speak on Refugee Crisis at Event in Lafayette". Interview with Pete Crooks, www.diablomag.com. April 2009.

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