35 Best The Kite Runner Quotes

In Khaled Hosseini’s mesmerising novel, The Kite Runner, we come across the story of Amir and Hassan. In fact, other than the tale, the novel also contains some very important quotes that also deserve attention. And in this article we’ll talk about some of the quotes from The Kite Runner. 

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner Quotes

1. The kinship I felt suddenly for the old land it suprised me. I thought I had forgotten about this land. But I hadn’t. Maybe Afghanistan hadn’t forgotten me either.

2. There is a way to be good again. 

3. They do nothing but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book written in a tongue they don’t even understand. God helps us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.

4. A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up for anything.

5. If the kite was the gun, then tar, the glass-coated cutting line, was the bullet in the chamber.

6. Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules.

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

8. For you a thousand times over.

9. You don’t order someone to polish your shoes one day and call them ‘sister’ the next.

10. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to be a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no act more wretched than stealing.

11. He says this is a war. There is no shame in war.

12. War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.

13. Long before the Roussi army marched into Afghanistan, long before villages were burned and schools destroyed, long before mines were planted like seeds of death and children buried in rock-piled graves, Kabul had become a city of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts.

14. Well, people need stories to divert them at difficult times like this.

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

16. The man is a Pashtun to the root. He has nang (honor) and namoos (pride).

17. We may be hardheaded and I know we’re far too proud, but, in the hour of need, believe me that there’s no one you’d rather have at your side than a Pashtun.

18. I’m happy you came. It means the world to me.

19. Life is a train. Get on board.

20. We’re a melancholic people, we Afghans, aren’t we? Often, we wallow too much in ghamkhori and self-pity. We give in to loss, to suffering, accept it as a fact of life, even see it as necessary. Zendagi migzara, we say, life goes on.

21. But time can be a greedy thing, sometimes it steals all the details for itself.

22. As an Afghan, I knew it was better to be miserable than rude.

23. I’m sorry we can’t offer you meat. Only the Taliban can afford meat now.

24. The wars had made fathers a rare commodity in Afghanistan.

25. Returning to Kabul was like running into an old, forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn’t been good to him, that he’d become homeless and destitute.

26. The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts. Such grace, such dignity, such a tragedy.

27. Take two Afghans who’ve never met, put them in a room for ten minutes, and they’ll figure out how they’re related.

28. Wars were waged, the internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

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

30. Afghanistan is like a beautiful mansion littered with garbage, and someone has to take out the garbage.

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

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

33. Father used to say it’s wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don’t know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.

34. I think he loved us equally but differently.

35. For me, America was a place to bury my memories.

I hope you like these, The Kite Runner quotes. Thanks for reading. Jai Hind.

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