Top 80 Nadia Hashimi Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “There are truths and lies and there are things in between, murky waters where light gets bent and broken.”

— Nadia Hashimi

52. “That’s what being a mother is, isn’t it? Waiting for a rounded belly to tighten in readiness; listening for the sound of hunger in the moonlit hours; hearing an eager voice call even in the camouflage of traffic, loud music, and whirring machines. It’s looking at every door, every phone, and every approaching silhouette and feeling that slight lift, that tickle of opportunity to be again – mother.”

— Nadia Hashimi

53. “Grudges don’t die – people do.”

— Nadia Hashimi

54. “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

55. “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

56. “I’d watched my grandmother tend to her plants, pruning one stem at a time, and checking the soil’s moisture with a finger. Like her plants, she bloomed with the sun and wouldn’t even draw the curtains in her home. How could this dark hole be her path to heaven?”

— Nadia Hashimi

57. “It’s time to undo Rahim.”

— Nadia Hashimi

58. “It’s an inside-out world, isn’t it? Sometimes the world turns inside out and we are in the center and it’s oh-so-dark and we think we will never, ever see the sun again.”

— Nadia Hashimi

59. “That was her escape, I realized. Where her body couldn’t take her, her mind went.”

— Nadia Hashimi

60. “What he wanted to say was that two thousand years of peace could be undone in a month of war.”

— Nadia Hashimi

61. “You’ve got the Russians and the Americans trying to be best buddies with the Afghan government. Two muscle-flexing superpowers playing tug-of-war, and they shredded this country to pieces.”

— Nadia Hashimi

62. “She would be brave because her father had once told her that the world lived within her. That her bones were made of mountains. That rivers coursed through her veins. That her heartbeat was the sound of a thousand pounding hooves. That her eyes glittered with the light of a starry sky. I am that girl, and this is my story.”

— Nadia Hashimi

63. “He did not live in fear of God because, he reasoned, a merciful God would not create us only to punish us for trivial earthly matters.”

— Nadia Hashimi

64. “People are God’s cruelest creations. They’ll step on the smallest of backs to feel an inch taller.”

— Nadia Hashimi

65. “Even righteousness is an ambiguous thing.”

— Nadia Hashimi

66. “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

67. “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

68. “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

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

— Nadia Hashimi

70. “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

71. “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

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

— Nadia Hashimi

73. “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

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

— Nadia Hashimi

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

— Nadia Hashimi

76. “Cornered mothers pray for strange things.”

— Nadia Hashimi

77. “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

78. “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

79. “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

80. “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

81. “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

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

— Nadia Hashimi

83. “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

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

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

— Nadia Hashimi

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

— Nadia Hashimi

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

— Nadia Hashimi