Khaled Hosseini is a physician and writer of the bestseller novel “The Kite Runner”. The heart-breaking tale set in war-torn Afghanistan was an instant hit world-over. Following the success of The Kite Runner he retired from medicine to write full-time. Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan but moved away at the age of 11. He has lived in France and United States for most of his life. Hosseini returned to Afghanistan until 2001 at the age of 36, where he “felt like a tourist in his own country”. In many subsequent interviews, he admitted to sometimes feeling survivor’s guilt for having been able to leave the country before the Soviet invasion and other wars.

All three of his novels became bestsellers: The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns And The Mountains Echoed.

Here are a few beautiful quotes from his bestselling books that have the power to stir anyone’s soul:

1.“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”
― Khaled Hosseini

2.  “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

3.  “There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.”
― Khaled Hosseini

4.  “A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated…”
― Khaled Hosseini

5.  “Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”
― Khaled Hosseini

6.  “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.”
― Khaled Hosseini

7.  “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.”
― Khaled Hosseini

8. “it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.”
― Khaled Hosseini

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

10.  “Marriage can wait, education cannot.”
― Khaled Hosseini

11. “And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini

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

13. “It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime…”
― Khaled Hosseini

14. “But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
― Khaled Hosseini

15. “For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Which one is your favorite?