Khaled Hosseini Quotes

The cliche is dead poetry.

Let's have some new cliches.

'Irony' is such an over-used word.

To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.

Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say.

Don’t repeat yourself. It’s not only repetitive, it’s redundant, and people have heard it before.

Cliche refers to words, commonplace to ideas. Cliche describes the form or the letter, commonplace the substance or spirit. To confuse them is to confuse the thought with the expression of the thought. The cliche is immediately perceivable; the commonplace very often escapes notice if decked out in original dress. There are few examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in original form. The most critical mind must often be content with one or the other of these pleasures, only too happy when it is not deprived of both at once, which is not too rarely the case.

I'm a cliche.

Most people try to avoid cliches. It's my ambition in life to try to get 'em right!

The words that come direct from the people are the greatest... If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.

Nothing is said that has not been said before.

I don't think anyone really says anything new.

So I think I sometimes will put a cliche in and then just pad it out so you're not noticing.

The problem with dragons is that everyone uses them. All the time. When that happens, they become commonplace. A lot of people think you can just throw them into a story and suddenly whatever you're writing is 28% cooler. But that doesn't work. All that does is make dragons into some boring cliche.

Most of my cliches aren't original.

Be original. That's my best advice. You're going to find that there's something that you do well, and try to do it with as much originality as you can, and don't skimp on the words. Work on the words.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

I have a phrase I say: 'What the damn?' It's my favorite. It just came to me one day.

I work a lot on words, so if I hear a word or see a word or a phrase or a sentence that someone says to me it just immediately sparks a concept.

There's always a way to say something that could seem really commonplace and make it special again.

I think cliche is a good thing sometimes.

Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence

I hate to say "found himself" - it sounds so ridiculous.

A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.

I'm pretty good at inventing phrases - you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopaedically* obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.