Top 239 Quotes & Sayings by Afghani Authors

Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts, and insights, and feelings. But every person is crippled in his or her own way by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world.

Self-reliance is not just words, but deeds.

There is a great power in speaking your truth and standing for something important.

You don't make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies.

In Afghan culture, you don't date - you marry. Even talking to boys before marriage brings great shame to your family.

I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad... until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people.

The Taliban and its backers bear the responsibility for the consequences of this outrageous act.

God says he will never be satisfied with the infidels. In terms of worldly affairs, America is very strong. Even if it were twice as strong or twice that, it could not be strong enough to defeat us. We are confident that no one can harm us if God is with us.

In order to see truly where I am and where I want to go, I need to remember where I once was.

If al-Qaida, all apologies to Microsoft for the analogy, is Windows 1, Daish is Windows 5.

A Western-style democracy in Afghanistan is a dream. I don't see that as a reality anytime soon. But I think some form of representative political process is not that far-fetched.

The Taliban's acts of cultural vandalism - the most infamous being the destruction of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas - had a devastating effect on Afghan culture and the artistic scene. The Taliban burned countless films, VCRs, music tapes, books, and paintings. They jailed filmmakers, musicians, painters, and sculptors.

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I've ever written was because I don't have a choice. I write stories because I can't wait to tell it, I can't wait to see how it ends.

There is a saying in Arabic meaning that every situation must be considered based on the realities on the ground. I can talk in some places freely, but not in others.

The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.

The only two places where I can read for long stretches are in airplanes and in bed at nighttime.

Read the kinds of things you want to write; read the kinds of things you would never write. Learn something from every writer you read.

My husband stands on his own two feet; my religion is not a factor. God created and decided for me to be born in a Christian family. It's not every day that a Lebanese marries an Afghan. I think God's hand is also in there.

You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not.

By terrorising the people, the Taliban have sown deep doubts about the government.

TV and film has defined my entire life.

I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films.

They say Afghanistan is the worst country for a girl to be born. Hogwash!

My central objective is, turn Afghanistan's location into a greater asset. Central Asia is becoming Afghanistan's major trading partner. The vision of connectivity is really important.

In 1979, when I was toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions.

To me, families are puzzles that take a lifetime to work out - or not, as often is the case - and I like to explore how people within them try to connect, be it through love, duty, or circumstance.

A good girl in Afghanistan should be silent, should not talk about her future, should listen to your family, be like a doll so that everyone can play with her.

In many parts of the world, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need women to solve the problems that men create.

I was good at being a doctor; my patients liked me. At times people trust you with things they wouldn't tell their spouses. It was a real privilege.

You take what's thrown at you, and you make a life out of it.

Money is not capital in most of the developing countries. It's just cash. Because it lacks the institutional, organizational, managerial forms to turn it into capital.

This project would not only open up venues of cooperation in the oil and gas sector between the member countries but also help bring the people of regional countries together.

You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And yet, by the time this idea passes through the different filters of your mind, and into your hand, and onto the page or computer screen - it becomes distorted, and it's been diminished.

When we get peace in Afghanistan, we'll go to New Zealand to learn best practices for raising sheep. We'll go to Switzerland and study hydroelectric projects.

I'm the first girl from Afghanistan to lead a series in the United States.

I'm very physical. I'm extremely active, and I would love to do something a little more sexy and dangerous, a la Sophia Loren, or funny and humorous, a la Woody Allen. Getting to do things along those lines would be extremely wicked and a dream come true.

Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah, too? Do McCain and Palin think there's something wrong with my name?

Politicians have become extraordinarily conservative, but our times require imagination and bold action.

I go to the gym in a baseball cap, sweats and then run into a boy I like. It happens - so what?

My entire life has been guided by a sense of equality, equality for loved ones.

We have destroyed 80 percent of the statues. There is only small amount left and we will destroy that soon.

Kabul was very popular with the hippies in the Sixties and Seventies. It was very quiet and peaceful.

Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.

The key demand for me from the public across the 34 provinces is to transform the state into an instrument of the rule of law, transform the economy into a productive system and change the education system.

Crisis for others is a source of despair. For me, it's an opportunity to bring reform.

My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal.

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing.

I will say that there is an inordinate amount of medicine in my novels, especially the first one. There are a lot of medical things that happen. A hip fracture, three different kinds of lung cancer, pneumonia, blood poisoning, and so on.

I may not raise my voice a lot, I may not be very flashy, but I like to interact with people.

Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves - their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.

For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.

I don't want to be a musician forever. I want to keep going to school and become a lawyer for women's rights and also use the law to help women.

My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters.

I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.

No one ever really read to me as a child.

What I've said from the beginning is that I am going to try to help all the vulnerable populations in Afghanistan - and to a certain extent, that's the majority of Afghanistan.

The women I see are very brave women, very strong women, women that are facing a lot of challenges and yet are up to the challenges and are making a very big effort. So I don't see why one of them cannot become a president - one day.

Afghanistan is moving to really becoming an export-oriented country.

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess.

I have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader.