Reham Khan > Quotes

“It amazes me to this day to think about women in the workplace who spend more time trying to damage other women’s images or opportunities than they do on improving their own abilities.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“All men are bastards. Some are obvious bastards. Some are covert bastards. The ones who appear to be bastards are safer as you know what you are dealing with. The men who hide behind a facade of manners and politeness are the coldest of bastards’.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“I guess it is easy to confuse cowardly acts taken with confidence and brave acts taken with fear. You become brave by doing brave acts.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“I thought that if people could lie about me, why would they not lie about issues where there was a lot more at stake?”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“The second thing that tore at my heart was the sight of educated yet jobless Baluch youngsters addicted to drugs. The landscape changed non-stop, but the story of deprivation and misery remained the same throughout the belt. NA-260 (Quetta-cum-Chagai-cum-Mastung) was considered the largest electoral constituency of Pakistan, spread over 700 kilometres and bordering Iran and Afghanistan. It was not only an administrative impossibility to govern, but had the additional challenges of stretching from a Pashtun stronghold in Quetta into a mainly Baluch belt. Cross-border smuggling and infiltration was a huge additional complication.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“In one of my travels, I would find a talented singer with real emotion in his raw voice, and would wonder how he had lived his simple life with this amazing hidden talent, while people far less talented than him sat in high castles and decided his fate.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“I learned that one should always listen to their own heart. There is no greater wisdom than what you know.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“I realized then that it is still possible for people who are successful to be genuinely nice people.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“There are two types of people that surround celebrities: sycophants and spongers. There was no place for a real person around Imran.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“Imran Khan came across as an arrogant, rude, and rather illmannered man. Even back then, I disliked this attitude of arrogance and female subjugation I could certainly relate to the young girl marrying this domineering older man. Imran Khan came across as everything I detested in a man, yet he was everything men like my husband aspired to be. A close friend even gifted me an Imran Khan coffee table book in an effort to convert me. I passed it on without reading it. Perhaps this was a mistake. Reading up on people who do not appeal to you can come in handy later in life.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“On one occasion, the principal sent me a message that a British girl would be sitting behind me, and that I should be helpful to her during the exam. Ironically, that girl had been sent back to Peshawar by expat parents for an arranged marriage. She was finding it hard to adjust to the conservative environment of Peshawar. The man she ended up marrying had put in a proposal to my family for me a year earlier. I had thought this man from Charsadda would not let me continue my education or have a career. Seeing him as a backward Pashtun, I had refused. A few years later, I bumped into the same girl. She had become a judge, and was madly in love with her rather progressive Pashtun husband, while I had found myself under lock-and-key in good old England.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“Good looks can be limiting in several ways. For some jobs, my looks went against me. There is a general perception that an attractive woman may not be competent or intelligent, and may be high maintenance.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“What men don’t realise is that you must tell your woman she is beautiful. She only wants to hear it from you, not from the rest of the world. Their words mean nothing to her. Your words pierce her heart. That’s how you won her and that’s how you will lose her.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“My rule of thumb is that a text longer than a single line must be of an emotional nature, and not worthy of my time.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“I always knew I would cope with everything better myself. Confiding in others is not ideal”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“Much of what has gone wrong in Pakistan has been because of our inability to balance our relationships. Extreme tilts have caused much bloodshed and mistrust.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“One religious woman even suggested I stay with him, but turn off all my senses and treat him only as a paycheck. All I could say in response was, “What you’re describing to me is prostitution”.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“My fierce, blind loyalty to those who were insincere to me was spotted by her early on. After I stood up in class to defend Nadia one day, the teacher took me out and gently explained why I needed to not take risks for other people. She tried to warn me that not all people were worthy of my earnest support, but I did not listen. The friend in question would later abandon me on all key junctures of my life. My H.E teacher had perhaps been through it herself, and could recognise the vulnerability behind my tough, practical joker exterior. But it would be thirty years before I learned to put myself first. We listen to people, but do we hear what they are saying?”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“A small man who is scared of the big bad world needs to feel he is big and powerful at home. Conversely, strong men can afford to whisper gently and smile at the women they love.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“But Imran would never tell me the truth. Perhaps Imran never told anyone the truth, not even himself.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“The problem with good-looking women is everyone wants them, and it’s common and easy to start malicious rumours against them when one realizes that they are out of reach.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“I would wonder how this man, who could not handle so much as a single email from a random party worker, could possibly handle the pressure of any public office, let alone that of a Prime Minister.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“Care and respect may not always come from those relationships we expect it from, but from unexpected quarters that we hadn’t considered.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“Imran had this knack of listening to people intently, pretending to be shocked by the information, and getting really convinced by their arguments, while remaining unmoved.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“A 30-year-old British-Asian woman working on human rights issues would one day tell me that she couldn’t leave her husband because her mother had made it clear to her that our society viewed a divorcee as no better than a prostitute. This disapproval was shocking, but came even from the most educated mothers in our society.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“As the IDPs poured into KP, other provinces were already shutting their borders to them. These proud tribals had sacrificed their homes for the peace and prosperity of the nation, and no one wanted to help rehouse them. At the start of the operation, no one had even arranged drinking water for these displaced people. I tweeted about it and Nestle immediately responded by delivering thirty-eight tons of water to the main relief camp in Bannu Sports Complex, which they would then continue to do every week. But hardly anyone else was doing anything. No one cared.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“But as with all geniuses, being ahead of her time meant leading a rather lonely and misunderstood existence”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“You will go through these periods in life when you sit alone with tears stinging your cheeks, questioning God. Why is this happening to me? Why, when I have done nothing wrong? Why am I being punished? Why would you give me so much pain? You will not understand while you are suffering. You won’t understand why you are alone. But a few months later, you will see how much better off you are because of that horrible injustice done to you.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“Sahir had attempted to underline the importance of compassion in politics, thinking that it would strike a chord with Imran. After all, his party’s message centred on change, justice and decency. But Imran ended the discussion by saying “Machiavelli’s ideas work”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“My father always addressed my mother as ‘’Darling’’, which was surprising for my brother’s wife. Even more shocking was the fact that he would greet his wife with a kiss when returning from a trip. This was also rather unusual in Pakistani culture, where affection towards spouses is restrained and frowned upon.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan