A Thousands Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns“Marriage can wait, education cannot.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“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.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“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.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Though there had been moments of beauty in it Mariam knew that life for most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clangor of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and leftover halwa under a starlit sky. She mourned that she would never see Aziza grow up, would not see the beautiful young woman that she would one day become, would not get to paint her hands with henna and toss noqul candy at her wedding. She would never play with Aziza's children. She would have liked that very much , to be old and play with Aziza's children.Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad , Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how people like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“I'm sorry," Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees, people find a way to survive, to go on.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.

The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles.”

“People…shouldn’t be allowed to have new children if they’d already given away all their love to their old ones. It wasn’t fair.”― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns