When I go to Afghanistan, I realize I've been spared, due to a random genetic lottery, by being born to people who had the means to get out. Every time I go to Afghanistan I am haunted by that.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the luck of circumstance in life, particularly in relation to privilege and opportunity.
Khaled Hosseini's quote highlights the stark reality of privilege and the randomness of life circumstances. By recognizing that his own safety and opportunities arise from a 'random genetic lottery,' he underscores the disparity between people born into fortunate versus unfortunate situations. His visits to Afghanistan remind him of those less fortunate, creating a haunting sense of responsibility and awareness of the inequalities present in the world.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, one could use this quote to emphasize the randomness of privilege and the importance of giving back.
You're gutless. It's how you were made. And that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you've never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is... God help him.
There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not break. - Amir
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.
And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.
The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.
Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.
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