Sohrab Quotes & Sayings

Mass market desire is about meaning and experience. — Sohrab Vossoughi

And one more thing ... You will never again refer to him as 'Hazara boy' in my presence. He has a name and it's Sohrab. — Khaled Hosseini

Let's not muddy the brook ; Perhaps a pigeon is drinking water at a distance, Or a pitcher is being filled in a village, Or a dervish may be dipping dry bread in the brook.
The folk upstream understand the water.
They did not muddy the brook. We also must not muddy the brook... — Sohrab Sepehri

For ever so long, on a branch of this willow
Sits a bird, the colour of a riddle.
Attuned to him no sound, no colour.
Totally alone, like me, in this land.
[...]

The bird's tale comes straight from the heart:
What fails to arrive is idle fancy.
His are ties with cities lost:
The riddle bird is a stranger in this land. — Sohrab Sepehri

I want to know:
Why is a horse noble and the dove beloved
but no one keeps a pet vulture in a gilded cage.
Why is the humble clover trodden upon rather than the red tulip.
I want to see anew and wash the words of the world
in wind and rain. — Sohrab Sepehri

He didn't so much live with us as occupy space. And precious little of it. Sometimes, at the market, or in the park, I'd notice how other people hardly seemed to even see him, like he wasn't there at all. I'd look up from a book and realize Sohrab had entered the room, had sat across from me, and I hadn't noticed. He walked like he was afraid to leave behind footprints. He moved as if not to stir the air around him. Mostly, he slept. — Khaled Hosseini

It does not matter where I am.
The sky is always mine.
Windows, ideas, air, love,
earth, all mine.
Why does it matter if sometimes,
the mushrooms of nostalgia grow? — Sohrab Sepehri

Be Vast, Solitary, Down to Earth and Firm — Sohrab Sepehri

There are three basic principles behind any well-designed product: truth, humanity, and simplicity. — Sohrab Vossoughi

Let's walk to the beach
Let's cast the net in the water
And catch freshness from water

Let's pick up a pebble from the ground
Feel the weight of existence

Let's not abuse moonshine if we suffer from fever
(Occasionally I have observed the moon descending during fever
And reaching the hand of the roof of heaven
I have noticed the goldfinch singing better
Sometimes the wound beneath my foot
Has taught the ups and downs of earth
Sometimes in my sickbed the dimension of the rose has multiplied
And the diameter of orange has increased, the radius of lantern too) — Sohrab Sepehri

The companies that get innovation right, again and again, are the ones that feel what their customers feel. That is true user-centered innovation — Sohrab Vossoughi

If he could not restore her to the status of a respectable woman, then Sohrab would make her into something else entirely, something hitherto unknown in their entire extended family, an educated woman, a professional woman. — Jasmin Darznik

The general public long ago stopped looking for beauty in high culture. But it still has TV and the movies....you are far more likely to find genuinely mesmerising images and real beauty in big-budget Hollywood movies -- think of, say, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar or his Dark Knight Trilogy -- than in any European art-house — Sohrab Ahmari

Was there happiness at the end [of the movie], they wanted to know.
If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab, and me ends with happiness, I wouldn't know what to say.
Does anybody's?
After all, life is not a Hindi movie. Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, undmindful of beginning, en, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis. — Khaled Hosseini

It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.
Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.
Sohrab's silence wasn't the self imposed silence of those with convictions, of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under. — Khaled Hosseini

Tonight
A friendly breeze
Will agitate roots of meanings.
Wonder will flap its wings.

Deep in the night, an insect
Will gnaw
At the green portion of solitude.
Morning will fall
Into the word of morning. — Sohrab Sepehri

Night's bewitching hand
Slams the door- in my face and that of sorrow.
No matter how hard I try,
It only mocks me.

All that I designed in daytime,
Night came and smeared with smoke.
All that I imagined at night,
Day came and erased outright. — Sohrab Sepehri

One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I'd just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples. — Khaled Hosseini

Full sun.
Starlings flock,
nasturtiums burst into blossom.

And me, cracking open a pomegranate I think to myself,
"If only the seeds of the heart could be so transparent,"

when the juice spurts out and splashes into my eyes,
vermilion tears trickling down.

My mother bursts out laughing
and Rana too. — Sohrab Sepehri