Quotes from And the Mountains Echoed

“I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“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.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately, intensely, and without recourse.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“J’aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. 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.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“All good things in life are fragile and easily lost”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around your neck.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“They tell me I must wade into waters, where I will soon drown. Before I march in, I leave this on the shore for you. I pray you find it, sister, so you will know what was in my heart as I went under.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“Kabul is... a thousand tragedies per square mile.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“The finger cut, to save the hand.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“Human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“I found a sad little fairy
Beneath the shade of a paper tree.
I know a sad little fairy
Who was blown away by the wind one night.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person's heart”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“She is furious with herself for her own stupidity. Opening herself up like this, voluntarily, to a lifetime of worry and anguish. It was madness. Sheer lunacy. 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. Faith that the world will not destroy you.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“I've read that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your own demise.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cannot see. After that, she does not look back anymore. She knows that if she does, she will weaken.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it's going to work. It's astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those first two weeks.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

“The cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet - they all begin to blur. 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.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from And the Mountains Echoed

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“I’ll tell you this, if he gives me one more order with that W word again, I’m going to divorce him before we can even finish the wedding.”
“The W . . . Okay, Bella, as usual you have lost me. W word?”
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Legna smothered the urge to chuckle. Her little friend’s famous sarcasm always tickled her, and it was meant to tickle. Bella had a way of hiding behind her wit and humor. She was stating things that clearly disturbed her, but she mocked them in such a way that anyone who did not know her would treat it as little more than a comedy routine.
Legna knew better.
“Now, Bella, you know Jacob adores you. He naturally wants to protect you. He literally worships the ground you walk on.”
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― Jacquelyn Frank, quote from Gideon

“Her attention wandered, and she began staring at the clouds, dreamily watching them drift over the city. When she was little, she wished she could fly up there and play, or even, when things were particularly miserable, stay there forever. She'd never told anyone, but she used to daydream about trapping one of the flying horses that were supposed to live in the mountains, or finding some other way of getting up there. The idea of living in a place where you were never above the same landscape, that in fact, you could see the world without leaving "home," was enchanting.”
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“If I had to guess, nephew, I would surmise that you are not in direct trouble as such. However, I will confess to the distinct and unsettling feeling that very large, very ponderous and most momentous wheels have been set in motion. When that happens I believe the lessons of history tend to indicate that it is best not to be in their way. Even without meaning harm, the workings and progress of such wheels are on a scale which inevitably reduces the worth of individual lives to an irrelevance at best.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Algebraist

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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