and every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan. Khaled Hosseini More Quotes by Khaled Hosseini More Quotes From Khaled Hosseini cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same colour. Khaled Hosseini benevolence cruelty shade What was I supposed to be, growing in your womb -- assuming it was even in our womb that I was conceived? A seed of hope? A ticket purchased to ferry you from the dark? A patch for that hole you carried in your heart? If so, then I wasn't enough. I wasn't nearly enough. I was no balm to your pain, only another dead end, another burden, and you must have seen that early on. You must have realized it. But what could you do? You couldn't go down to the pawnshop and sell me. Khaled Hosseini pain dark heart For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose. Khaled Hosseini nothing-to-lose stakes loses Mostly, though, I dream of good things...I dream that flowers will bloom in the streets..again and music will play in the...houses and kites will fly in the skies. Khaled Hosseini flower dream sky Every woman needed a husband, even if he did silence the song in her. Khaled Hosseini husband silence song There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood. Khaled Hosseini childhood littles children The [George W.] Bush administration tripled its aid package to Afghanistan. [Hamid] Karzai finally (and courageously) announced that warlords will be forbidden from holding office in the future government. And finally, NATO agreed to expand the peacekeeping forces to troubled areas outside of Kabul. Khaled Hosseini administration government office it is a heartBreaking sound, Amir Jan, the Wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you Never hear it. Khaled Hosseini heartbreaking mother sound [Barack Obama] is sending more troops [to Afghanistan], but they have also realized that we are not going to win that war through guns and tanks. We have to engage the neighbors, and it is good that there is a non-military strategy in addition to a military strategy. It is, at least, encouraging. Whether it will work or not, the jury is still put. Khaled Hosseini gun military war You’re not going to cry, are you? - I am not going to cry! Not over you. Not in a thousand years. Khaled Hosseini cry over-you years The story of what has happened to women in Afghanistan, however, is a very important one, and fertile ground for fiction. Khaled Hosseini important stories fiction Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere. Khaled Hosseini heart years thinking I don't know the nuts and bolts of writing. I studied medicine. I was a pre-med nerd. So everything I learned, I know about writing is very instinctive. Khaled Hosseini medicine nuts writing 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 stage negative thinking I'm a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ordinary things. Khaled Hosseini my-family simple ordinary You are never alone in Afghanistan. You are always in the company of others, usually family. You don't understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. Family is so central to your identity, to how you make sense of your world, it is very dramatic, and therefore an amazing source of storytelling, a source of fiction for me. Khaled Hosseini identity fiction world I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again. Khaled Hosseini pain liars moving People talk about apathy, especially in developed countries. We're kind of lulled into these tranquil lives, and we are pursuing our own thing and there is so much suffering on a mass scale around the world that you kind of become fatalistic. You might think suffering is inevitable, you kind of lose your sense of moral urgency. But there is always something you can do for someone in the world. Khaled Hosseini country people thinking If there's a God out there, then i would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork. Khaled Hosseini scotch important drinking Literature and film have a way of lifting you from your own existence and transporting you to some foreign place and putting you in the shoes with an experience different than your own. Khaled Hosseini shoes different literature