A Thousand Splendid Suns Quotes
"Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam."
"You see, I knew your mother before you were born, when she was a little girl, and I tell you that she was unhappy then. The seed for what she did was planted long ago, I’m afraid."
"It’s our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have."
"You couldn’t stretch a leg here without poking a poet in the ass."
"But remember, my girl, what the Koran says, 'Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power over all things, Who created death and life that He may try you.'"
"I’m the only one who loves you. I’m all you have in this world, Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing. You are nothing!"
"I’ll die if you go. The jinn will come, and I’ll have one of my fits. You’ll see, I’ll swallow my tongue and die. Don’t leave me, Mariam jo."
"It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault. No."
"What’s the sense schooling a girl like you? It’s like shining a spittoon."
"This is the face of my husband, Mariam thought."
"A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated."
"You’re a very, very bright girl. Truly, you are. You can be anything you want, Laila."
"The only enemy an Afghan cannot defeat is himself."
"The most important thing in his life, after her safety, was her schooling."
"It’s a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan."
"People shouldn’t be allowed to have new children if they’d already given away all their love to their old ones."
"Her future was no match for her brothers' past."
"I want to see the day the Soviets go home disgraced, the day the Mujahideen come to Kabul in victory."
"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls."
"Sometimes…I feel like you’re all I have, Laila."
"I’m giving you help around the house and her a sanctuary. A home and a husband."
"Lucky I was home," he said to the girl. "Lucky for you, I mean. I dug you out with my own hands."
"But even though the baby inside her was no bigger than a mulberry, Laila already saw the sacrifices a mother had to make. Virtue was only the first."
"I wouldn’t have fed you and washed you and nursed you if I’d known you were going to turn around and steal my husband."
"You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets."
"The years had not been kind to Mariam. But perhaps, she thought, there were kinder years waiting still."
"I wonder what they’ve done to my father’s cinema."
"You are a clumsy little harami. This is my reward for everything I’ve endured."
"I’m despicable? Half the women in this city would kill to have a husband like me."
"But it is God Who has planted them, Mariam jo. And it is His will that you tend to them."
"You should not get so attached," Rasheed said one night.
"It’s like someone is ramming a screwdriver into my ear," Rasheed said, rubbing his eyes.
"I hope you don’t think this excuses you from chores."
"You will not, under any circumstance, show your face."
"I couldn’t accept what the Mujahideen readily had: that sometimes in war innocent life had to be taken."
"You think this is some new, radical idea the Taliban are bringing?"
"It’s a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan, Laila."
"Everything she said came out sounding impatient, urgent."
"First baby." She said it like that, not as a question but as a statement.
"Your daughter needs a caesarian. Do you know what that is? We have to open her womb and take the baby out, because it is in the breech position."
"I have no X-ray either, no suction, no oxygen, not even simple antibiotics."
"But, Doctor sahib, isn’t there something you can give her?"
"Then cut me open," Laila said. "Cut me open and give me my baby."
"They want us to operate in burqa," the doctor explained.
"But there is no time. This baby needs to come out now."
"I swear you’re going to make me kill you, Laila," he said.
"Here was a woman, she thought, who had understood that she was lucky to even be working, that there was always something, something else, that they could take away."
"I’ll visit all the time," Laila managed to say. "I promise."
"And there you have it. Islamic flamingos," Tariq said.
"But he’ll have the last laugh, the cousin," Tariq said.
"I wish I’d taken you with me," Tariq nearly whispered.
"I know you’re a married woman and a mother now. And here I am, after all these years, showing up at your doorstep."
"If you want me to leave, if you want me to go back to Pakistan, say the word, Laila."
"But just as he was bearing down on her, Mariam saw Laila behind him pick something up from the ground."
"But then his upper lip curled back into a spiteful sneer, and Mariam knew then the futility, maybe even the irresponsibility, of not finishing this."
"Oh," she said, tremulously, barely able to make a voice, "Oh, Mariam."
"And there it was, spoken for the first time, the great, damning lie."
"Baba jan has gone away," Laila said, her throat closing up again.
"Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not."
"Mariam is never very far. She is here, in these walls they’ve repainted, in the trees they’ve planted, in the blankets that keep the children warm, in these pillows and books and pencils."
"But, mostly, Mariam is in Laila’s own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns."
"Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not."
"I will be waiting. I will be listening for your knock. I will be hoping."
"You can be anything you want, Laila, he says. I know this about you."