Top 80 Nadia Hashimi Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Hmm. A year before the Soviets invaded. Why’d you leave then?” he asks. I tense at the realization that Clay will ask many questions because that is his nature, and because it has been my nature to avoid people like him.”

— Nadia Hashimi

52. “My father had taught me to recognize and see through propaganda, to be suspicious of every statement that did not allow room for debate or question.”

— Nadia Hashimi

53. “Books are a tiny string connecting me to my parents. To be a reader is to be like them. To be around books and readers has brought me comfort too.”

— Nadia Hashimi

54. “Yes, well, people are very good at destroying things, good things.”

— Nadia Hashimi

55. “Some truths need to be said out loud before they can be believed.”

— Nadia Hashimi

56. “She moved as if she didn’t know her age.”

— Nadia Hashimi

57. “I had always been my father’s spirited girl, the child who had grown up in the halls of the palace. But the absence of my family made me reconsider who I was. If it hadn’t been for my father’s outstretched arms, perhaps I never would have dared to leap from the sofa cushions. If it hadn’t been for my mother’s applause, I might not have dared to dance in our living room. I only moved as boldly through the world as I had because I knew they would catch me, no matter how far I fell.”

— Nadia Hashimi

58. “Every promise we kept, every squeeze of the hand, every secretive smile we exchanged, every crying child we comforted- every one of those moments narrowed the distance between us.”

— Nadia Hashimi

59. “Many of our decisions were not decisions at all. We were herded into one choice or another, to put it gently.”

— Nadia Hashimi

60. “It was surprising how many days and years mattered not at all. His story, the heart of him, was really made up of only a handful of seconds or minutes. The rest was empty road, an expanse that only prolonged the travel from one point to another.”

— Nadia Hashimi

61. “Forty days. What was so magical about forty? I wondered. Was I to feel differently today than I did yesterday? Was I to forget what happened just six weeks ago? We Afghans marked both life and death with a forty-day period, as if we needed that much time to confirm either had truly happened. We had celebrated Jahangir’s birth forty days after he’d left my womb, unsure if this child was here with us to stay. And now his death. Forty days of praying, alone, with others and everything in between.”

— Nadia Hashimi

62. “But sometimes you have to act out of line, I suppose. Sometimes you have to take a chance if you want something badly enough.”

— Nadia Hashimi

63. “If you wait to dance on the moon, you may never dance at all.”

— Nadia Hashimi

64. “The wound is where the light enters you,” Boba said softly.”

— Nadia Hashimi

65. “Funny, isn’t it? We hear the same name and while they see dark, I see light.”

— Nadia Hashimi

66. “Sometimes the storm in a person’s mind raged too strongly.”

— Nadia Hashimi

67. “Cornered mothers pray for strange things.”

— Nadia Hashimi

68. “A conversation began to take shape between us. A conversation that happened in unspoken words, in false words, in knowing glances.”

— Nadia Hashimi

69. “When most adults looked at the world, children blurred and fell away. But Tilly and Mia looked at me as if the rest of the world had fallen away and I was the only person left standing.”

— Nadia Hashimi

70. “He tried to work alongside his father as a carpenter but a man who had been taught only to destroy found it hard to create.”

— Nadia Hashimi

71. “While Neelab was mesmerized by the gold and the stones, I was stunned by the ring’s ability to outlive anyone who had worn it.”

— Nadia Hashimi

72. “There are truths and lies and there are things in between, murky waters where light gets bent and broken.”

— Nadia Hashimi

73. “Only as an adult can a child imagine his parent as a whole person, as a husband, a brother, or a son. Only then can a child see how his parent fits into the world beyond four walls.”

— Nadia Hashimi

74. “We all cross a hundred peaks to get even this far. And there will be more before we each make it to whatever God has fated for us.”

— Nadia Hashimi

75. “To be around family is to feel the possibility of growing roots again.”

— Nadia Hashimi

76. “Our months were named after constellations, and soon it would be the month of Saur, or Taurus. I drew lines between stars and saw the bull’s swordlike horns piercing the sky. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled to picture the giant beast leaping down from the heavens and galloping on this land.”

— Nadia Hashimi

77. “People say ‘third world’ and think it just means countries without internet or paved roads,” I say. “But ‘third world’ is Cold War terminology. NATO countries are the first world and the Communist bloc is the second world. The third world was where those two clashed. So the mess in Afghanistan is actually a first and second world problem.”

— Nadia Hashimi

78. “I looked for small signs that we were not facing the end of the world, holding on tight to my freshly spun theory that if the sun and moon kept their rituals, my world would remain intact.”

— Nadia Hashimi

79. “The elderly become invisible sooner than we would hope.”

— Nadia Hashimi

80. “Sometimes it’s when people are silent that you hear them most clearly.”

— Nadia Hashimi

81. “Fiction, if done right, can bridge cultural divides. Stories can be a footpath for a reader to step into another land and view its indigenous practices and beliefs through a local lens, instead of a telescope.”

— Nadia Hashimi

82. “Children are touched by heaven – their every breath, every laugh, every touch a sip of water to the desert wanderer. I could not have known this as a child, but I know it as a mother, a truth I learned as my own heart grew, bent, danced, and broke for each of my children.”

— Nadia Hashimi

83. “My mother had organized her literature collection in the order in which she’d read the books. She’d explained her reasoning to me once, her fingers running across the spines. ‘I can retrace my steps this way. The stories that became part of me before I was a mother, and those I read with you in my arms.”

— Nadia Hashimi

84. “The human spirit, you know what they say about the human spirit? Is is harder than a rock and more delicate than a flower petal.”

— Nadia Hashimi

85. “Do as you must – you are not a child. But understand that there are many people willing to make your life more difficult. It is up to you to find a way to make things easier for yourself.”

— Nadia Hashimi

86. “Ghafoor came from a modest family in a nearby village and had been given to the palace in exchange for a cow.”

— Nadia Hashimi

87. “My best friend was the kind of daughter mothers wanted, one who would wear prim dresses and pearls. She could sit for hours without making a peep and didn’t go home with muddy knees, as I did.”

— Nadia Hashimi

88. “Grief starts before anyone has gone missing.”

— Nadia Hashimi

89. “Boys thought of only today. Mothers considered tomorrows.”

— Nadia Hashimi