But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...

For you, a thousand times over

I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.

And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.

Marriage can wait, education cannot.

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.

Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.

Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.

It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.

A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...

There is a way to be good again...

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

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything

Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.

People say that eyes are windows to the soul.

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.

A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.

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.

I will follow you to the ends of the world.

Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.

It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.

Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. - Amir

Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.

I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately, intensely, and without recourse.

She is the noor of my eyes and the sultan of my heart.

You changed the subject." "From what?" "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." "You know." "Know what?" "That I only have eyes for you.

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything.

War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace." - Baba

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.

In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.

You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.

Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.

Some stories don't need telling

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Men are easy,' he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. 'A man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand...well, God put a lot of thought into making you.

You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it.

I'm so afraid. Because I'm so profoundly happy. Happiness like this is frightening...They only let you this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.

All good things in life are fragile and easily lost

Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: its existence undisputed; its radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly.

Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads).

And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.