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"Sad stories make good books."
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"When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time."

"I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy."Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what isstrong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

"Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that."

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:The horror! The horror!"

"Yet who reads to bring about an end, however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards, their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble, the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."

"June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlico gave suck to their young. Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, to ride, she had adored all that."

"As far as now I can tell that most Stephen King fans don't know him well. They have read or viewed few works and their judge is based on them... that's now well knowing a writer!"

"Although I love elegant parties, dancing and dining and spending the night with a sweet woman in my arms, my life belongs to literature."

"Of all public figures and benefactors of mankind, no one is loved by history more than the literary patron. Napoleon was just a general of forgotten battles compared with the queen who paid for Shakespeare's meals and beer in the tavern. The statesman who in his time freed the slaves, even he has a few enemies in posterity, whereas the literary patron has none. We thank Gaius Maecenas for the nobility of soul we attribute to Virgil; but he isn't blamed for the selfishness and egocentricity that the poet possessed. The patron creates 'literature through altruism,' something not even the greatest genius can do with a pen."

"This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant."
Explore more quotes by Khaled Hosseini

"I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins."

"I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing."

"And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion."

"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."

"Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse."

"My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters."

"Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed."
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