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"There isn't, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry."
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"Without literature, life is hell."

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Explore more quotes by Khaled Hosseini

"James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?"

"In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst."

"Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. 'It wasn't meant to be', Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be."

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"Once, when I was little, I asked her if she'd cried when my father had fallen to his death.At the funeral? I mean, the burial?No, I did not.Because you weren't sad?Because it was nobody's business if I was."

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"Mother is fading for him, her face receding into shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from a fist."
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