Guilt In The Kite Runner Quotes

If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thous didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting. ~ Khaled Hosseini

He loathed Jimmy Carter, whom he called a "big-toothed cretin." In 1980, when we were still in Kabul, the U.S. announced it would be boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow. "Wah wah!" Baba exclaimed with disgust. "Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won't come swim in your pool. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Every sinner must be punished in a manner befitting his sin! ~ Khaled Hosseini

I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But i didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lip.
I ran ~ Khaled Hosseini

It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make ANYTHING all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting. - Amir ~ Khaled Hosseini

I loved wintertime in Kabul. I loved it for the soft pattering of snow against
my window at night, for the way fresh snow crunched under my black rubber boots,
for the warmth of the cast-iron stove as the wind screeched through the yards,
the streets. But mostly because, as the trees froze and ice sheathed the roads,
the chill between Baba and me thawed a little. And the reason for that was the
kites. Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of
existence. Kites were the one paper thin slice of intersection between those
spheres. ~ Khaled Hosseini

One of the great things about life is that you can start over. With God there are always new beginnings and second chances. He specializes in giving people fresh starts. While you may feel overwhelmed at times and held back by painful recollections haunting fears remorse shame or guilt God's power in your present life is not limited by what took place in your past. When you are governed and manipulated by your painful memories you allow your past to control your future. But when you choose to give God the controls He can do amazing things with the rest of your life. You can start now and have a brand-new ending ~ Sue Augustine

Guilt is different from shame. It has a different weight. Shame just heavies the bones, in a most insinuating way, rousing them to a dense, salty jelly. Guilt, though, is quick and hot and silvery, and it flashes through you with the regular, metered pulse of an electrical current, animating everything inside you to do something, anything, to make the shock stop. ~ Kaitlyn Greenidge

Guilt is imposed by others on you. It is a strategy of the priests to exploit. It is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to keep humanity in deep slavery forever. They create guilt in you, they create great fear of sin. They condemn you, they make you afraid, they poison your very roots with the idea of guilt. They destroy all possibilities of laughter, joy, celebration. Their condemnation is such that to laugh seems to be a sin, to be joyous means you are worldly. ~ Rajneesh

Our potent contemporary cultural sanctuaries shape the Dharma to fit our cultural traditions so that the mirroring needed for spiritual paths to work can occur. It is important to the viability of any path that students see themselves reflected in it. This does not have to be only in terms of race, sexuality, or gender, but also in terms of the true nature of students' lives... The Buddha's teachings that are passed on in Dharma centers can certainly benefit everyone. But we will not recognize our true nature until we honestly look at ourselves. To embark on that path of healing or liberation requires exposure--where we can be comfortably seen without encountering another's guilt, explanation, or justification... Cultural sanctuaries provide a space where appearance doesn't act as a platform to launch diversity campaigns, or provide a basis for special attention, which many people of color do not want. They are refuges in which one can participate in the collective, rather than being perceived as a distinct individual in the midst of sameness. ~ Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

He does not know what caused him to break off from Weston and walk out. Perhaps it was when the boy said 'forty-five or fifty'. As if, past mid-life, there is a second childhood, a new phase of innocence. It touched him, perhaps, the simplicity of it. Or perhaps he just needed air. Let us say you are in a chamber, the windows sealed, you are conscious of the proximity of other bodies, of the declining light. In the room you put cases, you play games, you move your personnel around each other: notional bodies, hard as ivory, black as ebony, pushed on their paths across the squares. Then you say, I can't endure this any more, I must breathe: you burst out of the room amd into a wild garden where the guilty are hanging from trees, no longer ivory, no longer ebony, but flesh; and their wild lamenting tongues proclaim their guilt as they die. In this matter, cause has preceded effect. What you dreamed has enacted itself. You reach for a blade but the blood is already shed. The lambs have butchered and eaten themselves. They have brought knives to the table, carved themselves, and picked their own bones clean. ~ Hilary Mantel

•Eating disorders are addictions. You become addicted to a number of their effects. The two most basic and important: the pure adrenaline that kicks in when you're starving - you're high as a kite, sleepless, full of a frenetic, unstable energy - and the heightened intensity of experience that eating disorders initially induce. At first, everything tastes and smells intense, tactile experience is intense, your own drive and energy themselves are intense and focused. Your sense of power is very, very intense. You are not aware, however, that you are quickly becoming addicted. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Like every other house-renting, paycheck-to-paycheck, heel dragging working American, it wouldn't matter if I stepped in it by accident or was pushed, or simply whiffed it as I walked by. With the powers in play, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with anything. ~ James Anderson

Every patient clings to fantasies in which he sees himself in the active role so as to escape the pain of being defenseless and helpless. To achieve this he will accept guilt feelings, although they bind him to neurosis. ~ Alice Miller

These two ways to incorporate mindfulness sit well with art therapy: first, by incorporating meditative or contemplative methods to facilitate relaxation and deepen the inward turn for connecting with deeper consciousness in all phases of the art task; second, by introducing cognitive skills to bring clients into the present moment with what they are feeling. Not how (guilt, anger, shame), but what (I feel helpless, unworthy, agitated). Cognitive mindfulness also provides a skillful means for dialoguing with art, where remaining open and image-centered may result in deeper insights. ~ Barbara Jean Davis

The most outstanding manifestation of negative growth in the spiritual, mental and physical health of the human race through eons of evolution is the pride of place that has been given to Guilt. ~ Zeina

The rest of the time he entertained all the guilt that wished to call, carried in by the wind through the darkness, to enter his spirit ... ~ Colm Toibin

God is our final say in who and what's negative and who and what's positive in our lives. It is best not to have this so over-simplified as the illusioned superstitionists have it; an infinite being's tests may not always be so flowery, and the things we may see as positive are in many cases simply desires of our sinful nature. We are to protect our spirit without falling into the narcissistic mistake of trying to protect our selfish emotions, which the latter, in turn, is more than unlikely to bring peace and happiness. But rather guilt and emptiness. When one walks around constantly, in his mind, attempting to separate positive versus negative people, he is already controlled by something even worse than those he calls the 'negative people', and that is before he spots it soon enough to avoid it as he hypocritically tries to avoid them. ~ Criss Jami

My stomach sank. "I don't want you to be miserable."
"Then don't go," he said. His expression was so desperate that the guilt formed a lump in my throat.
"I can't move in here, Travis. That's crazy."
"Says who? I just had the best two weeks of my life."
"Me, too."
"Then why do I feel like I'm never gonna see you again? ~ Jamie McGuire

Neurotic guilt," like that often fostered by religion, is a different matter. It tends to be excessive and inappropriate, based on the expectations of others instead of personal values or dwelling on the error rather than using the guilt feelings to make a change. In your religious experience, committing a sin made you a sinner, a bad deed made a bad person. This global condemnation creates low self-worth and more neurotic guilt and misery. ~ Marlene Winell

It is sadly true that most institutions and nations admire and reward sins of the "spirit," and various forms of arrogance and greed often lead to promotions and praise. But pride, ambition, and vanity are still pride, ambition, and vanity; they do not stop being capital sins because someone is pope or president. "Greed is good" in America, extravagant bonuses are envied and imitated, and careerism is rampant among the clergy ... Sins of the flesh, however, carry shame and guilt and can always be used to bring anybody down in church, culture, or the state. ~ Richard Rohr

The truth is, sometimes siblings have nothing in common but blood...Sometimes you stay up late at night, thinking things that make you feel like a heartless monster, wishing for something different and then feeling sick with guilt because you know what the cost of "different" would be...There's a difference between having no siblings and having a broken one. ~ Beth Revis

We are all instruments pulling the bows across our own lungs. Windmills, still startling in every storm. Have you ever seen a newborn blinking at the light? I wanna do that every day. I wanna know what the kite called itself when it got away, when it escaped into the night ... ~ Andrea Gibson

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don't email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me. ~ Allie Brosh

Gaslight Goods. Let us be your light in the midst of life's darkness, the sunlight in your foggy day, the candle in your wind. This is Kite. How can I help you today?
I grimaced. That was their opener? ~ Chloe Neill

There's a Chinese word that means "soul sister," and that is the word I would use to address you in my heart. Listen to me, soul sister: Fate or luck or destiny already put you through hell once. Please don't make it worse by condemning yourself. There is no choice that would have left you feeling no guilt. Every time I watch Adam struggle to speak, every time I see another child laugh and point at him, every time I watch his face fall as he realizes he is not going to be treated like the other kids, I feel wrenched by guilt just as you did when you heard my story. Life is hard. We make the best choices we can. Condemnation, whether it comes from around you or inside you, only robs the world of another dram of compassion. God knows, we need all the compassion we can get. If you promise to try to forgive yourself, I'll try to forgive myself as well. I think, in my heart of hearts, that there is nothing for either one of us to forgive. ~ Martha Beck

Why is it that our many mental institutions are overcrowded? People will not take their time. They do not live in the present! For are not all fears, phobias, crippling anxieties tied in with the future - a time that has not yet come - and may not? And are not deep depressions, melancholias, and foolish guilt complexes connected with the past - a time that is gone, and is gone forever - a time that cannot be changed even by God Almighty? These dementias most certainly bespeak some relation to the fact that those plagued with them have not been objective enough to stay in contact with the one great gratuitous reality called now. ~ M. Raymond

I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering. I hope you spend it alone. I hope you live with regret and guilt in your heart and never find a way to endure it. ~ Sarah J. Maas

. . .Consciousness came and went.

Consciousness went and came like the errant winds of spring, and I, who so often have had difficulty in falling asleep among the besieging shades of memory, now fought to stay awake as a child struggles to lift a faltering kite by the string. ~ Gene Wolfe

You can handle the past and accomplish productivity in a less harmful way. ~ Patricia Dsouza

It can also be useful to politics, enabling that science to discover how much of it is no more than verbal construction, myth, literary tops. Politics, like literature, must above all know itself and distrust itself. As a final observation, I should like to add that it is impossible today for anyone to feel innocent, if in whatever we do or say we can discover a hidden motive - that of a white man, or a male, or the possessor of a certain income, or a member of a given economic system, or a sufferer from a certain neurosis - this should not induce in us either a universal sense of guilt or an attitude of universal accusation. When we become aware of our disease or of our hidden motives, we have already begun to get the better of them. What matters is the way in which we accept our motives and live through the ensuing crisis. This is the only chance we have of becoming different from the way we are - that is, the only way of starting to invent a new way of being. ~ Italo Calvino

What I can make people do . . . it's not what they want to do. It may sound corny, but I want people to like me for me, not because I can force them to or because of who my mom is or who I am in the Family. You know?"
He raised his green gaze to my blue one. "That's one of the things I like about you, Lila. You don't care about any of that."
"Just one of the things?" I teased, trying to make him laugh a little, just so he'd forget his guilt and grief, if only for a few moments.
"Just one." His voice took on a low, husky note. "I could list all the others, if you want."
My gaze locked with his and my soulsight kicked in, showing me all of his emotions. And I felt them, too - more intensely than I ever had before. His heart still ached with that soul-crushing guilt, and it always would. But that hot spark I'd seen inside him that first day at the Razzle Dazzle had finally ignited into a roaring fire, burning as hot and bright as my own emotions were right now.
Devon hesitated, then leaned in, just a little. My breath caught in my throat.
He inched forward a little more. I wet my lips.
He came even closer, so close that his warm breath brushed my cheek and his scent flooded my nose, that sharp, fresh tang of pine. Clean and crisp, just like he was, inside and out. I sighed. Suddenly, my hands itched to touch him, to trace my fingers over the sharp planes of his face, and then slide them lower, over all of his warm, delicious muscles . . .
~ Jennifer Estep

It is strange the way that someone who wants to find you guilty can start to make you believe in your own guilt, even when you know you are innocent. I was afraid I would condemn myself my mistake. ~ S.J. Parris

Context is everything in both narrative and real life, and while the accusation is never that these creators deliberately set out to discriminate against gay and female characters, the unavoidable implication is that they should have known better than to add to the sum total of those stories which, en masse, do exactly that. And if the listmakers can identify the trend so thoroughly – if, despite all the individual qualifications, protests and contextualisations of the authors, these problems can still be said to exist – then the onus, however disconnected from the work of any one individual, nonetheless falls to those individuals, in their role as cultural creators, to acknowledge the problem; to do better next time; perhaps even to apologise. This last is a particular sticking point. By and large, human beings tend not to volunteer apologies for things they perceive to be the fault of other people, for the simple reason that apology connotes guilt, and how can we feel guilty – or rather, why should we – if we're not the ones at fault? But while we might argue over who broke a vase, the vase itself is still broken, and will remain so, its shards ground into the carpet, until
someone decides to clean it up.

Blog Post: Love Team Freezer ~ Foz Meadows

Strangely enough, he didn't feel any guilt for separating himself from his past. Five years ago, he clearly heard in his dream a message brought to him by Archangel Michael from the God Almighty, telling him he should get up and leave everything behind; that his place was not there; that it was time to go in search for his true self and for his true destiny.
Now, five years after, he was sitting in the Bowery chapel, a broken and homeless man, still trying to find that which he was looking for. But he didn't regret anything he had done in those five years. In his mind, it wasn't his doing. He sincerely believed that he surrendered his own will to the will of God and that everything that happened to him, good or bad, had to happen for some reason. It was God's doing. It was his destiny. He just had to figure out why. ~ Stevan V. Nikolic

Environmentalists, by and large, are very deeply invested in tactics that have worked to their satisfaction over the last thirty years, namely scaring and shaming people ... I am questioning whether you can go on doing that indefinitely ... [pushing] that same fear-guilt button over and over again. As psychologists will tell you, when a client comes in with an addiction, they are already ashamed. You don't shame them further. ~ Theodore Roszak

All European writers are 'slaves of their baptism,' if I may paraphrase Rimbaud; like it or not, their writing carries baggage from an immense and almost frightening tradition; they accept that tradition or they fight against it, it inhabits them, it is their familiar and their succubus. Why write, if everything has, in a way, already been said? Gide observed sardonically that since nobody listened, everything has to be said again, yet a suspicion of guilt and superfluity leads the European intellectual to the most extreme refinements of his trade and tools, the only way to avoid paths too much traveled. Thus the enthusiasm that greets novelties, the uproar when a writer has succeeded in giving substance to a new slice of the invisible; merely recall symbolism, surrealism, the 'nouveau roman': finally something truly new that neither Ronsard, nor Stendahl , nor Proust imagined. For a moment we can put aside our guilt; even the epigones begin too believe they are doing something new. Afterwards, slowly, they begin to feel European again and each writer still has his albatross around his neck. ~ Julio Cortazar

I've lived with guilt for all these years from walkin' away from the girl I loved more than anything. I've struggled with forgiving myself. I've fought every damn day to prove that I'm better for you!" He moves forward, forcing me to retreat. "I've given you every part of me, Presley." His chest heaves as tears form in his own eyes. "Me! Only me! I've kept all your secrets! I've stood by your side. Held you when you've cried over everything that Todd put you through! ~ Corinne Michaels

In the end, it was the secrets that held me hostage and fuelled my depression, but, once released, emancipation - from fear, shame, guilt and judgement - was finally possible. ~ B.G. Bowers

Guilt must not be allowed to fester in the silence of the soul, poisoning it from within. It needs to be confessed. Through confession we bring it into the light, we place it within Christ's purifying love. In confession, the Lord washes our soiled feet over and over again and prepares us for table fellowship with him. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Grief made people guilty. Guilty for being five minutes late, for taking the wrong streetcar, for ignoring a couph or sleeping too soundly. Guilt and grief went hand in hand. ~ Ann Hood

Out country's messed up son. Mortally wounded. And I can't for the life of me se how we're going to heal it. Your generation can't do it. Even you're too old. The new ones coming along...that's where the hope lies, if there is any. We've got to acknowledge what we did to those people. But I don't think we ever will. People hate admitting guilt, but we can't blame it all on the Knoxes of the world. We're all guilty. Blacks are messed up, too...but how could they not be? White people fight this so hard because they know the truth in their bones. You know? You don't get that angry unless you know you're wrong. ~ Greg Iles

It is the essence of the institutions of liberty that it be recognized that guilt is personal and cannot be attributed to the holding of opinions or to mere intent in the absence of overt acts. ~ Charles Evans Hughes

White America is tortured by black America's failure to thrive, and all that guilt and anxiety has only gotten worse as a substantial quota of white America loses its own footing in the middle class and plunges into the rough country of joblessness, hopelessness, and government dependency. ~ James Howard Kunstler

These coupling certainly do not fit with the mainstream idea that genes, or at least organisms, are hell-bent on reproducing themselves. They do fit, however, with the idea of a social role for sex, and they fit with the idea that sexual reproduction is a spandrel, a by-product of some other phenomenon. If Roughgarden is on to something, she believes it could have cultural as well as scientific implications. The orthodoxy of biology has corroded our culture like battery acid, she says, In general, we play out the roles prescribed for us by that culture - aggressive male and coy female - because deviation from its "norm" results in emotional and physical violence, bigotry, personal guilt, and criminalized behaviors. If biology has been getting it wrong though, the new orthodoxy could trigger an infusion of tolerance; perhaps the anomalous prevalence of sexual reproduction will end up having deeper repercussions outside of science than within it. ~ Michael Brooks