Khaled Hosseini Quotes

When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.

It's a source of great sadness to me that my father died without having seen me do anything worthwhile. He was constantly having to make excuses for me.

You never forget the feeling of not getting to the World Series. Yes, it sticks with you.

At 30 I thought my life was over. I thought I'd have made something of myself by then, that life would somehow have made the necessary arrangements - but actually I had nothing.

I have crushed the cup of youth like a rose between my fingers but its nectar never warmed my weary heart.

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

Alas! Alas! Life is full of disappointments; as one reaches one ridge there is always another and a higher one beyond which blocks the view.

When we want to reach a dream for the second time, you want it to come true, when you try so hard, you are so close to achieving it, it makes things very difficult to live with afterwards.

I always wished for this, but it's almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.

I came from a very loving home, had a happy life with no great aspirations, but going to the seminary changed me. There was a chunk of my childhood missing. Once I'd realised it wasn't for me, I still felt a tremendous pressure to continue for fear of letting everybody down.

My father was a dreamer - my hero. He was a smart, tough guy from Poland, a cutter of lady's handbags, an old socialist-unionist who always considered himself a failure. His big line was: 'Don't end up like me.'

Some people will always be disappointed.

I just have to accept that I won't ever be Al Green, which is a hard pill to swallow.

Fiction is about small ambition, small failed ambition, small disappointed hope.

I think the Knight boys have a long history of disappointing their fathers.

Not many people get that 'happily ever after' they want in life. There are disappointments every step of the way, no matter how hard one strives for the best.

I remember coming out of college thinking, 'OK, I'm gonna get an agent, and I'm gonna make money. I'm gonna make millions of dollars.' And that never happened.

My grandmother really wanted to see me become a singer, but she passed away before I became one.

Manchester United was a sad experience. Things didn't go as I had hoped. I was disappointed, and it didn't help me to rise to the surface.

This is a terrible confession to make, but after I left the Army I had a number of things to try. I had a great conceit to think that if all else failed I could always go to Hollywood. So when all else did fail I really went to Hollywood. And then I found out how wrong I was.

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.

Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart.

It was not despair, but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promises broken and unfulfilled. Yet there were other days when she listened, was led on and deceived by fresh promises which her youth had held out to her.

It doesn't matter what you're chasing, when you get there you're gonna be like, "Oh, is this all? It kind of sucks."