First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"Sayed Jafar Masihullah Gharibzada - Omar"
"There is a way to be good again."
"Afghanistan is the land of the Pashtuns. We're the real Afghans, not this flat-nosed Hazara. His people pollute our homeland. They dirty our blood. If idiots like you and your father hadn't taken these people in, we'd be rid of them."
"You are among peers. Everyone here is a storyteller."
"Afghani people and Pakistani people, they are like brothers. Muslims have to help Muslims."
"They call this area Afghan Town. Sometimes it feels like Peshawar is a suburb of Kabul."
"Khalid Abdalla - Amir Qadiri"
"Atossa Leoni - Soraya Taheri"
"Zekeria Ebrahimi - Young Amir"
"Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada - Young Hassan"
"Homayoun Ershadi - Baba"
"Shaun Toub - Rahim Khan"
"Ali Dinesh - Sohrab"
"Saïd Taghmaoui - Farid"
"Qadir Farookh - General Iqbal Taheri"
"It's a dangerous thing, being born. Dangerous for the mother, dangerous for the child. Your father would die for you."
"Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors."
"I see America has infused you with her optimism. But there is such a thing as God's will."
"I dream that my son will grow up to be a good person, a free person. I dream that someday you will return to revisit the land of our childhood. I dream that flowers will bloom in the streets again and kites will fly in the skies."
"You see, General Sahib, my father slept with his servant's wife, and she bore him a son named Hassan. Hassan is dead now. That boy sleeping in the other room is Hassan's son. He's my nephew. That's what you tell people when they ask. And one more thing, General Sahib: you will never again refer to him as "a Hazara boy" in my presence. He has a name, and it's Sohrab."
"The citizens of Kabul were skeletons now. Skeletons selling naswar in the night market, skeletons drinking cups of strong tea, skeletons playing cards in the moonlight. They greeted me as I passed, teeth clacking together in their jaws. "Salaam, brother," they said. "Welcome home.""
"Who are we in this complicated world?"
"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."
"There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft....When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness."
"War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace."
"All this talk of sinning is making me thirsty."
"Fuck the Russia!"
"I wish Hassan had been with us today. That would make him happy."
"[about the mullahs] I piss on the beards of those self-righteous monkeys."
"Instead of being a doctor and saving lives, my son wants to make up stories."
"There is no pain today."
"For you, a thousand times over."
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.