A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

“Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.”
– Chapter 1, pg. 7

“I have customers who bring their wives to my shop. The women come uncovered; they talk to me directly, look me in the eye without shame. They wear makeup and skirts that show their knees. Sometimes they even put their feet in front of me and their husbands stand there and watch. They allow it. They think nothing of a stranger touching their wives’ bare feet! They think they’re being modern men, intellectuals, on account of their education, I suppose.” – Chapter 10, pg. 63

"On the streets, Mariam saw people stopping in their tracks. At traffic lights, faces emerged from the windows of cars, turned upward toward the falling softness. What was it about a season’s first snow fall that was so entrancing? Was it the chance to see something as yet unsoiled, untrodden? To catch the fleeting grace of a new season, a lovely beginning, before it was trampled and corrupted?” – Chapter 13, pg. 79

“She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women like us suffer. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.” – Chapter 13, pg. 82

“The only enemy an Afghan cannot defeat is himself.” – Chapter 18, pg. 122

“Somewhere in the city someone had just died, a pall of black smoke was hovering over some building that had collapsed in a puffing mass of dust. There would be bodies to step around in the morning. Some would be collected. Others not. Then Kabul’s dogs, who had developed a taste for human meat, would feast.” – Chapter 26, pg. 169

So those were some of my favorite book quotes from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

I didn’t cry. And I didn’t like it as much as The Kite Runner. I got the impression Hosseini assumed you had read his other book, so he went right ahead

and packed this one full of all the Afghanistan war details he breezed over the first time. The Mujahideen? Hazara? Tajik? Half the book I had no clue which of these groups were fighting the other. Hell, I’m not even sure if those words refer to a religion, ethnicity, or the first name of some commander guy. Anyway, it sure is good to live in America. Never will I have to worry a doctor might perform my C-section without anesthesia. Plus, such violent misogyny is disgusting. If I were Mariam I would have bashed my husband's head in earlier. And then do the same to anyone who tried to hang me for it. Hmm, why do I sound like a serial killer in all my posts?