Zia Haider Rahman Quotes

#1. He, like so many of them, came from that breed of international development experts unsparing in its love for all humanity but having no interest in people.

Zia Haider Rahman

#2. Advisers were numberless in Kabul, like stray dogs in Mumbai.

Zia Haider Rahman

#3. Since when did books ever solve anything? They only raise more questions than they answer, otherwise they're just fucking entertainment, and I am not here to fucking entertain you.

Zia Haider Rahman

#4. We're not put on this earth to fuck around. We have to make something of our lives.

Zia Haider Rahman

#5. If I had my time again, I'd believe in reincarnation.

Zia Haider Rahman

#6. Is that not the Promethean fable, that the fire stolen from the gods will light men their way even while it burns their hands?

Zia Haider Rahman

#7. I am as impressed by honesty as anyone, but when there is a hint that a man is taking me into his confidence, my first instinct is to suspect him. Am I to be flattered? And is he about to break another's confidence?

Zia Haider Rahman

#8. Afghanistan doesn't have the oil of the Khazars, he said, and we're not ready to prostitute our women like the Thais. Unlike the Westerner's, ours is not a spiritual poverty but a material one. When our needs in that area are met, we will not have the dilemma or crisis of Western man.

Zia Haider Rahman

#9. How many senators have taken their conception of what America can do from what they've seen on the American movie screen?

Zia Haider Rahman

#10. An exile, said Zafar, is a refugee with a library.

Zia Haider Rahman

#11. Yes, they mean well, but the only good that an absence of malice guarantees is a clear conscience.

Zia Haider Rahman

#12. Afghanistan's barren, ragged desolation moaned a long dirge of ancient wonder, the earth's broken features ready to receive fallen horsemen, the lost traveller, and all the butchered tribes.

Zia Haider Rahman

#13. Every man, he said, carries his own pyre.

Zia Haider Rahman

#14. I am too much of an imitator to be a true writer.

Zia Haider Rahman

#15. Difficult questions can have simple answers.

Zia Haider Rahman

#16. When evil enters the world, do you think it comes with horns and cloven feet, billowing some foul stench?

Zia Haider Rahman

#17. destruction. Turning to God can save your life, but, in the process, it can annihilate your soul.

Zia Haider Rahman

#18. That's another argument for writing: making something that outlasts you.

Zia Haider Rahman

#19. I wasn't as untrusting. I had faith in the goodness of people, the perfection of love.
What happened?
Everything ends. And it's how they end that leaves the lasting effect.

Zia Haider Rahman

#20. Our choices are made, our will flexed, in the teeth of events that overwhelm us and devour us.

Zia Haider Rahman

#21. Listening is hard, as my friend once said, because you run the risk of having to change the way you see the world.

Zia Haider Rahman

#22. No sight better expresses the politics of aid, the dynamics of the West and the developing countries, than the image of children, happy or in need.

Zia Haider Rahman

#23. Then, as now, I believe that the English use language to hide what they mean.

Zia Haider Rahman

#24. Autobiography, we know, is flawed from the moment the nib of the pen touches the parchment.

Zia Haider Rahman

#25. We take much for granted, much that is granted by others, and we're told to do as we're told, and we agree. And we must agree.

Zia Haider Rahman

#26. It is no consolation to reflect that every cause itself is an effect, making the search for causes and reasons a fool's errand.

Zia Haider Rahman

#27. It's always nice to learn a thing or two from a novel, don't you think?

Zia Haider Rahman

#28. Everything new is on the rim of our view, in the darkness, below the horizon, so that nothing new is visible but in the light of what we know.

Zia Haider Rahman

#29. You think people never say what they mean. The truth is, nine times out of ten what they say is all they mean.

Zia Haider Rahman

#30. What is the beginning of rage, the beginning of anger? Not dislike, but love.

Zia Haider Rahman

#31. We are a dangerous breed, you and I. We are lock pickers. We are dangerous to others and ourselves. It is always a great risk to open a door if you don't know what's behind it.

Zia Haider Rahman

#32. Maps, contour maps and all maps, intrigue us for the metaphors that they are: tools to give us a sense of something whose truth is far richer but without which we would perceive nothing and never find our bearings.

Zia Haider Rahman

#33. Our memories do not visit us in chronology, and the story we form by joining up the memories involves choices with the purpose of making a whole and finding a pattern.

Zia Haider Rahman

#34. Pointing to the sandstone buildings around us, some of which had stood there for several hundreds of years, she commented on how old everything in Oxford looked. Can't they afford anything new? she asked earnestly.

Zia Haider Rahman

#35. You see, calling things by their proper names is the beginning of wisdom. That's a Chinese proverb and they invented writing. The wisdom, in case you're wondering, is that when you get names right, you narrow the gap between you and the thing.

Zia Haider Rahman

#36. This is a miserable country, Zafar. I don't need to explain that to you. It needs help. Isn't it that simple?
Is anything that simple?

Zia Haider Rahman

#37. that the truth is finer and that the only answers each of us hears are to the questions we are capable of asking.

Zia Haider Rahman