In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst.
Interpretation
The parent-child relationship profoundly shapes an individual's identity and perception of self, marked by a mix of emotions.
Khaled Hosseini emphasizes the significant impact of parents on their children's lives, illustrating how the complexities of the parent-child bond define one's identity and self-perception. This relationship is often fraught with conflicting emotions such as love and anger, showcasing the multifaceted nature of familial ties and their influence on personal development.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the importance of parenting in child development.
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.
My mother grew up with each of her children - whatever your age, that's the age she'd be when she listened to your stories. She never belittled our problems. It made for something permanent and reliable.
Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
Being pregnant was very much like falling in love. You are so open. You are so overjoyed. There's no words that can express having a baby growing inside of you so, of course, you want to scream it out and tell everyone.
I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.
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