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And That, ...is The Story Of Our Country, One Invasion After Another...macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now The Soviets. But We're Like Those Walls Up There. Battered, And Nothing Pretty To Look At, But Still Standing.

-Khaled Hosseini

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And That, ...is The

Khaled Hosseini

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And That, ...is The Story Of Our Country, One Invasion After Another...macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now The Soviets. But We're Like Those Walls Up There. Battered, And Nothing Pretty To Look At, But Still Standing.

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They Tell Me I Must Wade Into Waters, Where I Will Soon Drown. Before I March In, I Leave This On The Shore For You. I Pray You Find It, Sister, So You Will Know What Was In My Heart As I Went Under.

For A Novelist, It's Kind Of An Onerous Burden To Represent An Entire Culture.

Gone. Vanished. Nothing Left. Nothing Said.

When I Was In Afghanistan In 2007, I Went From Village To Village Where Refugees Had Returned, And They Were Living Out In The Open Under Tents, Sometimes Completely Exposed To The Environment. And They Were Homeless, Which Meant They Would Lose Children In The Winter To The Cold And In The Summers In The Extreme Heat. It's Extremely Humiliating For Them To Be Homeless, Culturally It's Very Shameful.

There Is An Energy, A Romance In Writing The First Novel That Can Never Be Duplicated Again. I Was Entirely Absorbed In That World As I Wrote The Book [the Kite Runner] And To See The Final Page Of That Manuscript Whir Out Of The Printer Was A Very Special Feeling Indeed.

Probably The Single Most Commen Response I Get From My Readesr, Be It Through E-mails Or Letters, Is That They Did Not Know Much, Or At Times, They're Quite Frank, They Didn't Care Much About Afghanistan. But They Pay Attention More After Reading These Novels, And At Times It Has Triggered This Humaitarian Spirt: Some Have Donated Money Or At Time Times, People Have Joined Humatiarian Organizations That Work In Afghanistan.

If You Connect Emotionally With The Plight Of Those Characters, Ou Feel What They Feel And You Walk Away With A Sense Of Understanding And Empathy, And Hopefully, Something Has Been Illuminated For You. And I Tink That's What Happendd For A Lot Of Readers With My Novels.

I Wanted To Write About Afghanistan Before The Soviet War Because That Is Largely A Forgotten Period In Modern Afghan History.

I Foresaw My Life Unfolding As An Interminable Stretch Of Nothingness And So I Spent My Years On Tinos Floundering, Feeling Like A Stand-in For Myself, A Proxy, As Though My Real Self Resided Elsewhere, Waiting To Unite Someday With This Dimmer, More Hollow Self. I Felt Marooned. An Exile In My Own Home

Mariam Lay On The Couch, Hands Tucked Between Her Knees, Watched The Whirlpool Of Snow Twisting And Spinning Outside The Window. She Remembered Nana Saying Once That Each Snowflake Was A Sigh Heaved By An Aggrieved Woman Somewhere In The World. That All The Sighs Drifted Up The Sky, Gathered Into Clouds, Then Broke Into Tiny Pieces That Fell Silently On The People Below. As A Reminder Of How People Like Us Suffer, She'd Said. How Quietly We Endure All That Falls Upon Us.

My Family Left Afghanistan In 1976, Well Before The Communist Coup And The Soviet Invasion. We Certainly Thought We Would Be Going Back. But When We Saw Those Soviet Tanks Rolling Into Afghanistan, The Prospect For Return Looked Very Dim. Few Of Us, I Have To Say, Envisioned That Nearly A Quarter Century Of Bloodletting Would Follow.

I Believe Fabio Celoni's Work Vividly Brings To Life Not Only The Mountains, The Bazaars, The City Of Kabul And Its Kite-dotted Skies, But Also The Many Struggles, Conflicts, And Emotional Highs And Lows Of Amir's Journey [from The The Kite Runner].

In Early 1999, I Was Watching Tv, When I Came Across A Story On Afghanistan. It Was A Story About The Taliban And The Restrictions They Were Imposing On The Afghan People, Most Notably Women. At Some Point In The Story, There Was A Casual Reference To Them Having Banned The Game Of Kite Fighting. This Detail Struck A Personal Chord With Me, As I Had Grown Up In Kabul Flying Kite With My Friends.

He Knew I'd Seen Everything In That Alley, That I'd Stood There And Done Nothing. He Knew That I'd Betrayed Him And Yet He Was Rescuing Me Once Again, Maybe For The Last Time.

Boys, Laila Came To See, Treated Friendship The Way They Treated The Sun: Its Existence Undisputed; Its Radiance Best Enjoyed, Not Beheld Directly.

I Returned To Afghanistan Because I Had A Deep Longing To See For Myself How People Lived, What They Thought Of Their Government, How Optimistic They Were About The Future Of Their Homeland.

It's Wrong What They Say About The Past, I've Learned, About How You Can Bury It. Because The Past Claws Its Way Out.

It Turned Out That, Like Satan, Cancer Had Many Names.

I Get Daily E-mails From Afghans Who Thank Me For Writing This Book [the Kite Runner], As They Feel A Slice Of Their Story Has Been Told By One Of Their Own. So, For The Most Part, I Have Been Overwhelmed With The Kindness Of My Fellow Afghans.

Her Beauty Was The Talk Of The Valley.it Skipped Two Generations Of Women In Our Family, But It Sure Didn't Bypass You, Laila.

I Started A Foundation, Called The Khaled Hosseini Foundation. The Mission Has Been To Help The Most Vulnerable Groups In Afghanistan. So The Focus Has Been On Women, Children, And Homeless Refugees, Most Of Whom Are In Fact Women And Children.

But If You Have A Book That Needs Urgent Reading,' She Said, 'then Hakim Is Your Man.

I Was Overwhelmed With The Kindness Of People [in Afghanistan] And Found That They Had Managed To Retain Their Dignity, Their Pride, And Their Hospitality Under Unspeakably Bleak Conditions.

If There's A God Out There, Then I Would Hope He Has More Important Things To Attend To Than My Drinking Scotch Or Eating Pork.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now This Lou Gehrig Fellow Of Mine. How Did Men Come To Monopolize Disease Names Too?

The Impact Had Cut Your Upper Lip In Two, He Had Said, Clean Down The Middle. Clean Down The Middle. Like A Harelip.

There Was So Much Goodness In My Life. So Much Happiness. I Wondered Whether I Deserved Any Of It.

Marriage Can Wait, Education Cannot.

Fabio Celon Did Send Me Pages As He Progressed, Both In Black And White And Some Color Samples As Well. It Was Really Exciting To See The Sketches And To See The Story [the Kite Runner] Shaping Up Visually.

Black And White

So, Then. You Want A Story And I Will Tell You One.

[flying Kite With My Friends] Is One Of The Seminal Memories Of Growing Up For Me.

I Would Give Them (aspiring Writers) The Oldest Advice In The Craft: Read And Write. Read A Lot. Read New Authors And Established Ones, Read People Whose Work Is In The Same Vein As Yours And Those Whose Genre Is Totally Different. You've Heard Of Chain-smokers. Writers, Especially Beginners, Need To Be Chain-readers. And Lastly, Write Every Day. Write About Things That Get Under Your Skin And Keep You Up At Night.

In Afghanistan, You Don't Understand Yourself Solely As An Individual. You Understand Yourself As A Son, A Brother, A Cousin To Somebody, An Uncle To Somebody. You Are Part Of Something Bigger Than Yourself.

You've Always Been A Tourist Here. You Just Didn't Know It.

You Changed The Subject." "from What?" "the Empty-headed Girls Who Think You're Sexy." "you Know." "know What?" "that I Only Have Eyes For You." Laila Swooned Inside. She Tried To Read His Face But Was Met By A Look That Was Indecipherable: The Cheerful, Cretinous Grin At Odds With The Narrow, Half Desperate Look In His Eyes. A Clever Look, Calculated To Fall Precisely At The Midpoint Between Mockery And Sincerity

How Many More People Right Now Feel Connected To Mumbai Because Of Slumdog Millionaire, Or Suddenly Are Interested In The Plight Of Orphans On Mumbai After Seeing That Film? The Same Thing With The Kite Runner And A Thousand Splendid Suns.

A Society Has No Chance Of Success If Its Women Are Uneducated.

Years Later, I Learned An English Word For The Creature That Assef Was, A Word For Which A Good Farsi Equivalent Does Not Exist: Sociopath.

And This Is What I Want You To Understand, That Good, Real Good, Was Born Out Of Your Father's Remorse. Sometimes, I Thing Everything He Did, Feeding The Poor On The Streets, Building The Orphanage, Giving Money To Friends In Need, It Was All His Way Of Redeeming Himself. And That, I Believe, Is What True Redemption Is, Amir Jan, When Guilt Leads To Good.

Equally Important Is The Lack Of Cultivable Land For Farmers, A Profound Problem When You Take Into Account That Afghanistan Has Always Largely Been An Agricultural Country, And That Even Before The Wars Destroyed Lands And Irrigation Canals, Only 5 Per Cent Of The Land Was Cultivable.

Life Just Doesn't Care About Our Aspirations, Or Sadness. It's Often Random, And It's Often Stupid And It's Often Completely Unexpected, And The Closures And The Epiphanies And Revelations We End Up Receiving From Life, Begrudgingly, Rarely Turn Out To Be The Ones We Thought.

I Have A Theory About Marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And It’s That Nearly Always You Will Know Within Two Weeks If It’s Going To Work. It’s Astonishing How Many People Remain Shackled For Years, Decades Even, In A Protracted And Mutual State Of Self-delusion And False Hope When In Fact They Had Their Answer In Those First Two Weeks.

And Yet She Was Leaving The World As A Woman Who Had Love And Been Loved Back. She Was Leaving It As A Friend, A Companion, A Guardian. A Mother. A Person Of Consequence At Last.

You Changed The Subject." "from What?" "the Empty-headed Girls Who Think You're Sexy." "you Know." "know What?" "that I Only Have Eyes For You.

The Film [kite Runner] Was Not As Big A Hit In The United States As It Was Worldwide, I Think It May Have Been Swallowed Up By All The Other Movies It Had To Go Up Against.

I Thought About You All The Time. I Used To Pray That You’d Live To Be A Hundred Years Old. I Didn’t Know. I Didn’t Know That You Were Ashamed Of Me.

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.

My Father And I Did Work For A While At The Flea Market And There Really Are Rows Of Afghans Working There, Some Of Whom I Am Related To.

A Sudden Happiness Catches Me Unawares. I Feel It Trickling Into Me, And My Eyes Go Liquid With Gratitude And Hope.

The Story Of What Has Happened To Women In Afghanistan, However, Is A Very Important One, And Fertile Ground For Fiction.

She Would Never Leave Her Mark On Mammy's Heart The Way Her Brothers Had, Because Mammy's Heart Was Like A Pallid Beach Where Laila's Footprints Would Forever Wash Away Beneath The Waves Of Sorrow That Swelled And Crashed, Swelled And Crashed.

You Have Think Tanks Like The Widely Respected Atlantic Council That Have Published Reports In The Past Year That Have Called Afghanistan A Failing State.

I Grew Up With Some Kind Of Storytelling Instinct, And When I Write, My Default Setting Is To Find A Story And Then To Tell It. It's The Only Way I Know How To Write.

You Don't Have To Donate Money, It Can Be Clothes, Or Books, Or Mediavl Supplies. So There's So Much That Can Be Done [for Refugees], The Most Difficult Thing Is That First Step That Decision To Do Something.

Afghan Women, As A Group, I Think Their Suffering Has Been Equaled By Very Few Other Groups In Recent World History.

J’aurais Dû être Plus Gentille—i Should Have Been More Kind. That Is Something A Person Will Never Regret. You Will Never Say To Yourself When You Are Old, Ah, I Wish I Was Not Good To That Person. You Will Never Think That.

And Every Day I Thank [god] That I Am Alive, Not Because I Fear Death, But Because My Wife Has A Husband And My Son Is Not An Orphan.

It's A Funny Thing... But People Mostly Have It Backward. They Think They Live By What They Want. But Really, What Guides Them Is What They're Afraid Of. What They Don't Want.

War Doesn't Negate Decency. It Demands It, Even More Than In Times Of Peace.

Joseph Shall Return To Canaan, Grieve Not, Hovels Shall Turn To Rose Gardens, Grieve Not. If A Flood Should Arrive, To Drown All That's Alive, Noah Is Your Guide In The Typhoon's Eye, Grieve Not.

Kabul Was Very Popular With The Hippies In The Sixties And Seventies. It Was Very Quiet And Peaceful.

The Kite Runner Is A Story Of Two Boys And A Father, And The Strange Love Triangle That Binds Them.

When I Go To Afghanistan, I Realize I've Been Spared, Due To A Random Genetic Lottery, By Being Born To People Who Had The Means To Get Out. Every Time I Go To Afghanistan I Am Haunted By That.

I'm A Pretty Uncomplicated Person. I Live A Very Simple Life With My Family And I Enjoy Very Ordinary Things.

Writing For Me Is Largely About Rewriting.

Quiet Is Turning Down The Volume Knob On Life.

Mostly, Though, I Dream Of Good Things...i Dream That Flowers Will Bloom In The Streets..again And Music Will Play In The...houses And Kites Will Fly In The Skies.

It's Literally Just Been Formed. It's A 501 C3, Non-profit Charitable Foundation Called, Unsurprisingly, The Khalled Hosseini Foundation. The Aim Is To Help Refugees And Aim Vulnerable Women And Children.

Though The Kite Runner Was My First Completed Novel, I Had Been Writing On And Off For Most Of My Life, Primarily Short Stories, And Primarily For Myself.

Nothing Good Came Free. Even Love. You Paid For All Things. And If You Were Poor, Suffering Was Your Currency.

My Books Are About Ordinary People, Like You, Me, People On The Street, People Who Really Have An Expectation Of Reasonable Happiness In Life, Want Their Life To Have A Sense Of Security And Predictability, Who Want To Belong To Something Bigger Than Them, Who Want Love And Affection In Their Life, Who Want A Good Future For The Children.

I Finally Had What I'd Wantes All Those Years. Except Now That I Had It, I Felt As Empty As This Unkempt Pool I Was Dangling My Legs Into.

We Will Also Be Funding Projects That Empower Women And Children In Afghanistan And Now And Then Give Scholarships To Afghan Students Here In The Bay Area.

People…shouldn’t Be Allowed To Have New Children If They’d Already Given Away All Their Love To Their Old Ones. It Wasn’t Fair.

In The End, The World Always Wins. That's Just The Way Of Things.

I Brought Hassan’s Son From Afghanistan To America, Lifting Him From The Certainty Of Turmoil And Dropping Him In A Turmoil Of Uncertainty

It Is A Heartbreaking Sound, Amir Jan, The Wailing Of A Mother. I Pray To Allah You Never Hear It.

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.

Her Impulse, Her Need, To Be The Corrector Of Injustices, Warden Of The Downtrodden Flock. And

I'm Gladly Doing My Own Thing For The Time Being.

There [in Afghanistan ] Is A Tremendous Need For Selter. So I Am Focusing Most Of The Efforts Of The Foundation To Building Shelters For Refugees In Northern Afghanistan And We Have Already Begun Doing So.

The Desert Weed Lives On, But The Flower Of Spring Blooms And Wilts.

She Wished She Could Visit Mariam's Grave, To Sit With Her Awhile, Leave A Flower Or Two. But She Sees Now That It Doesn't Matter. Mariam Is Never Very Far.... Mariam Is In Her Own Heart, Where She Shines With The Bursting Radiance Of A Thousand Suns.

I Don't Know The Nuts And Bolts Of Writing. I Studied Medicine. I Was A Pre-med Nerd. So Everything I Learned, I Know About Writing Is Very Instinctive.

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.

Whether You Do Something Or Decide To Do Nothing, Either Way, You Are Making A Moral Choice. And I Hope People Make The Right One.

For You, A Thousand Times Over

The Ordinary, Utterly Mundane Reason Behind The Massacre Makes It Somehow More Terrible, And Far More Depressing. The Word 'senseless' Springs To Mind, And Idris Thwarts It. It's What People Always Say. A Senseless Act Of Violence. A Senseless Murder. As If You Could Commit Sensible Murder.

I Loved Him In That Moment, Loved Him More Than I'd Ever Loved Anyone, And I Wanted To To Tell Them All That I Was The Snake In The Grass, The Monster In The Lake. I Wasn't Worthy Of This Sacrifice; I Was A Liar, A Cheat, A Thief. And I Would Have Told, Except That A Part Of Me Was Glad. Glad That This Would All Be Over With Soon. Baba Would Dismiss Them, There Would Be Some Pain, But Life Would Move On. I Wanted That, To Move On, To Forget, To Start With A Clean Slate. I Wanted To Be Able To Breathe Again.

Usually In Films, When Muslims Pray, It's Either Before Or After They've Blown Something Up.

And That, ...is The Story Of Our Country, One Invasion After Another...macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now The Soviets. But We're Like Those Walls Up There. Battered, And Nothing Pretty To Look At, But Still Standing.

Panic. You Open Your Mouth. Open It So Wide Your Jaws Creak. You Order Your Lungs To Draw Air, Now, You Need Air, Need It Now. But Your Airways Ignore You. They Collapse, Tighten, Squeeze, And Suddenly You're Breaithing Through A Drinking Straw. Your Mouth Closes And Your Lips Purse And All You Can Manage Is A Croak. Your Hands Wriggle And Shake. Somewhere A Dam Has Cracked Open And A Flood Of Cold Sweat Spills, Drenches Your Body. You Want To Scream. You Would If You Could. Cut You Have To Breathe To Scream. Panic.

I Experienced Kabul With My Brother The Way Amir And Hassan Do: Long School Days In The Summer, Kite Fighting In The Winter Time, Westerns With John Wayne At Cinema Park, Big Parties At Our House In Wazir Akbar Khan, Picnics In Paghman.

Perspective [is] A Luxury When Your Head [is] Constantly Buzzing With A Swarm Of Demons.

It Was You Nabi. It Was Always You. Didn't You Know?

And The Past Held Only This Wisdom: That Love Was A Damaging Mistake, And Its Accomplice, Hope, A Treacherous Illusion. And Whenever Those Twin Poisonous Flowers Began To Sprout In The Parched Land Of That Field, Mariam Uprooted Them. She Uprooted Them And Ditched Them Before They Took Hold.

Though There Had Been Moments Of Beauty In It, Mariam Knew That Life For Most Part Has Been Unkind To Her. But As She Walked The Final Twenty Paces, She Could Not Help But Wish For More Of It.

I Wished I Could Be Alone In My Room, With My Books, Away From These People.

Though There Were Moments Of Beauty, Mariam Knew For The Most Part That Life Had Been Unkind To Her.

I May Not Agree With All Or Even Most Of The Tribal Traditions, But It Seems Ti Me That, Out There, People Live More Authentic Lives. They Have A Sturdiness About Them. A Refreshing Humility. Hospitality Too. And Resilience. A Sense Of Pride.

Some Stories Don't Need Telling

Throughout The Last Century There Were Multiple Attempts At Giving Afghan Women More Autonomy, To Change Marriage Laws, To Abolish The Practice Of Bride Price And Child Marriage, And To Enforce Women To Be Involved In School. Every Time, The Reaction From The Traditionalists Was One Of Contempt And Scorn And At Times Outright Rebellion. I Think The Emancipation Of Women In Afghanistan Has To Come From Inside, Through Afghans Themselves, Gradually, Over Time.

There Is A Way To Be Good Again.

A Great Deal Remains To Be Done In Afghanistan And The Jury Is Out As To Whether The International Community Has The Commitment And The Patience To See The Rebuilding Process Through.

Now, Especially In Public Places, You Always Have That Unease. When The Children Were Cast, If I Thought That They Might Be Victims Of Violence Because Of Participating In This Movie, We Would Have Chosen Children From Outside This Country.

I Think Novelists, When They Write Their Books, End Up Having Occasionally Serving A Purpose And Playing Roles That They Never Really Fully Either Intended Or Even Understood.

I Laughed. Partly At The Joke, Partly At How Afghan Humor Never Changed. Wars Were Waged, The Internet Was Invented, And A Robot Had Rolled On The Surface Of Mars, And In Afghanistan We Were Still Telling Mullah Nasruddin Jokes.

Like A Compass Needle That Points North, A Man's Accusing Finger Always Finds A Woman. Always.

But Then It Passed, As All Things Do.

I Will Follow You To The Ends Of The World.

It's Tremendous What Can Happen When Suddenly You Make An Emotional Connection.

Emotional Connection

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.

The Problem, Of Course, Was That [he] Saw The World In Black And White. And He Got To Decide What Was Black And What Was White. You Can't Love A Person Who Lives That Way Without Fearing Him Too. Maybe Even Hating Him A Little.

Black And White

My Memories Of Kabul Are Vastly Different Than The Way It Is When I Go There Now. My Memories Are Of The Final Years Before Everything Changed. When I Grew Up In Kabul, It Couldn't Be Mistaken For Beirut Or Tehran, As It Was Still In A Country That's Essentially Religious And Conservative, But It Was Suprisingly Progressive And Liberal.

What Good Is Regret? It Brings Back Nothing. What We Have Lost Is Irretrievable.

Educate Yourself, Learn About What Refugees Face When They Don't Have Homes, After They Have Lost Everything.

Lost Everything

But Better To Get Hurt By The Truth Than Comforted With A Lie.

You’re Not Going To Cry, Are You? - I Am Not Going To Cry! Not Over You. Not In A Thousand Years.

Laila Remembered Mammy Telling Babi Once That She Had Married A Man Who Had No Convictions. Mammy Didn't Understand. She Didn't Understand That If She Looked Into A Mirror, She Would Find The One Unfailing Conviction Of His Life Looking Right Back At Her.

For Courage, There Must Be Something At Stake. I Come Here With Nothing To Lose.

Nothing To Lose

I Have Lived A Long Time, And One Thing I Have Come To See Is That One Is Well Served By A Degree Of Both Humility And Charity When Judging The Inner Workings Of Another Person's Heart

I Want To Give Up My Bearings, Slip Out Of Who I Am, Shed Everything, The Way A Snake Discards Old Skin.

Children Aren't Coloring Books. You Don't Get To Fill Them With Your Favorite Colors.

These Random Unkind Moment That Catch You Wen You Least Expect Them.

Must Have Been Quite The Culture Shock, Going There.” “yes It Was.” Idris Doesn’t Say That The Real Culture Shock Has Been In Coming Back.

I Don't Listen To Music When I Write - I Find It Distracting.

Listening To Music

Give Sustenance, Allah. Give Sustenance To Me.

I Learned That The World Didn't See The Inside Of You, That It Didn't Care A Whit About The Hopes And Dreams, And Sorrows, That Lay Masked By Skin And Bone. It Was As Simple, As Absurd, And As Cruel As That.

Nothing Happens In A Vacuum In Life: Every Action Has A Series Of Consequences, And Sometimes It Takes A Long Time To Fully Understand The Consequences Of Our Actions.

The Experience Of Writing 'the Kite Runner' Is One I Will Always Think Back On With Fondness. There Is An Energy, A Romance In Writing The First Novel That Can Never Be Duplicated Again.

Not A Word Passes Between Us, Not Because We Have Nothing To Say, But Because We Don't Have To Say Anything

Tariq Tucked The Gun Into The Waist Of His Denims. Then He Said A Thing Both Lovely And Terrible. "for You," He Said. "i'd Kill With It For You, Laila.

I Found A Sad Little Fairy Beneath The Shade Of A Paper Tree. I Know A Sad Little Fairy Who Was Blown Away By The Wind One Night.

I Give Novels As Gifts, And There Is Nothing I Like To Receive More As A Gift.

She Was The Trembler Of Knees, The Spiller Of Teacups.

But It Is Important To Know This, To Know Your Roots. To Know Where You Started As A Person. If Not, Your Own Life Seems Unreal To You. Like A Puzzle. Vous Comprenez? Like You Have Missed The Beginning Of A Story And Now You Are In The Middle Of It, Trying To Understand.

A Boy Who Won't Stand Up For Himself Becomes A Man Who Can't Stand Up To Anything.

Beauty Is An Enormous, Unmerited Gift Given Randomly, Stupidly.

I Have Been Involved With The Un Refugee Agency For A Few Years Now, And We Have Done Events To Speak About Refugees, Focusing More And More On The Situation With Afghan Refugees.

But Laila Has Decided That She Will Not Be Crippled By Resentment. Mariam Wouldn’t Want It That Way. ‘what’s The Sense?’ She Would Say With A Smile Both Innocent And Wise. ‘what Good Is It, Laila Jo?’ And So Laila Has Resigned Herself To Moving On. For Her Own Sake, For Tariq’s, For Her Children’s. And For Mariam, Who Still Visits Laila In Her Dreams, Who Is Never More Than A Breath Or Two Below Her Consciousness. Laila Has Moved On. Because In The End She Knows That’s All She Can Do. That And Hope.

It Is Now Your Duty To Hone That Talent, Because A Person Who Wastes His God-given Talents Is A Donkey.

But The Game Involves Only Male Names. Because, If It's A Girl, Laila Has Already Named Her

She Passed These Years In A Distant Corner Of Her Mind. A Dry, Barren Field, Out Beyond Wish And Lament, Beyond Dream And Disillusionment. There, The Future Did Not Matter. And The Past Held Only This Wisdom: That Love Was A Damaging Mistake, And It Accomplice, Hope, A Treacherous Illusion.

If You Were The Poor, Suffering Was Your Currency.

It Always Hurts More To Have And Lose Than To Not Have In The First Place.

Don't Be Afraid To Tell The Truth. It's Better To Hurt Someone By Truth Than To Make Them Happy By Lies.

Telling The Truth

You Are Never Alone In Afghanistan. You Are Always In The Company Of Others, Usually Family. You Don't Understand Yourself Really As An Individual, You Understand Yourself As Part Of Something Bigger Than Yourself. Family Is So Central To Your Identity, To How You Make Sense Of Your World, It Is Very Dramatic, And Therefore An Amazing Source Of Storytelling, A Source Of Fiction For Me.

If The Story Had Been About Anyone Else, It Would Been Dismissed As Laaf, That Afghan Tendency To Exaggerate ---sadly, Almost A National Affliction; If Someone Bragged That His Son Was A Doctor, Chances Were The Kid Had Once Passed A Biology Test In High School.

The Cities, The Roads, The Countryside, The People I Meet - They All Begin To Blur. I Tell Myself I Am Searching For Something. But More And More, It Feels Like I Am Wandering, Waiting For Something To Happen To Me, Something That Will Change Everything, Something That My Whole Life Has Been Leading Up To.

America Was Different. America Was A River, Roarng Along, Unmindful Of The Past. I Could Wade Into This River, Let My Sins Drown To The Bottom, Let The Waters Carry Me Someplace Far. Someplace With No Ghosts, No Memories, And No Sins.

The [george W.] Bush Administration Tripled Its Aid Package To Afghanistan. [hamid] Karzai Finally (and Courageously) Announced That Warlords Will Be Forbidden From Holding Office In The Future Government. And Finally, Nato Agreed To Expand The Peacekeeping Forces To Troubled Areas Outside Of Kabul.

I Have A Particular Disdain For Islamic Extremism, And Of Course, In Both 'the Kite Runner' And 'a Thousand Splendid Suns' That's Obvious.

At The Time We Are Focusing Our Efforts Primarily On Building Shelters For Refugees. Homelessness In Afghanistan Is A Huge Problem.

As Far As I Know, He Never Asked Where She Had Been Or Why She Had Left And She Never Told. I Guess Some Stories Do Not Need Telling.

I Came From An Educated, Upper Middle-class Family. My Mother Was A Persian And History Teacher At A Large High School For Girls. Many Of The Women In My Extended Family And In Our Circle Of Friends Were Professionals. In Those Days, Women Were A Vital Part Of The Economy In Kabul. They Worked As Lawyers, Physicians, College Professors, Etc., Which Makes The Tragedy Of How They Were Treated By The Taliban That Much More Painful.

After All, Life Is Not A Hindi Movie.

That's How Children Deal With Terror, They Fall Asleep.

Attention Shifted To Him Like Sunflowers Turning To The Sun.

Hills That Stand Soft And A Sky That Stands High And Blue, And The Sun Setting Behind A Windmill, And Always, Always, Hazy Strings Of Mountains That Fall And Fall Away On The Horizon.

Everyone Is An Ocean Inside. Every Individual Walking The Street. Everyone Is A Universe Of Thoughts, And Insights, And Feelings. But Every Person Is Crippled In His Or Her Own Way By Our Inability To Truly Present Ourselves To The World.

All Stories I Write Are Compulsive. Anything I’ve Ever Written Was Because I Don’t Have A Choice. I Write Stories Because I Can’t Wait To Tell It, I Can’t Wait To See How It Ends.

At Least, It Is Encouraging To Me That President [barack] Obama Has Put Afghanistan Front And Center In This Broader So-called War On Terror, And That He Is Taking A Different Approach To Afghanistan.

I See America Has Infused You With The Optimism That Has Made Her So Great

Kabul Was A Thriving Cosmopolitan City With Its Vibrant Artistic, Intellectual And Cultural Life. There Were Poets, Musicians, And Writers. There Was Also An Influx Of Western Culture, Art, And Literature In The '60s And '70s.

I Think The Emancipation Of Women In Afghanistan Has To Come From Inside, Through Afghans Themselves, Gradually, Over Time.

I Entered The Literary World, Really, From Outside. My Entire Background Has Been In Sciences; I Was A Biology Major In College, Then Went To Medical School. I've Never Had Any Formal Training In Writing. So What I Know About Writing, I Know From My Own Instincts, And Whatever The Narrative Voice Is In My Own Head.

One Could Not Count The Moons That Shimmer On Her Roofs, Or The Thousand Splendid Suns That Hide Behind Her Walls.

Michael Bealmear Is A Philanthropist, And He Has Become Interested In The Issue Of Refugees, And He Proposed That We Do An Event In His Community, Where We Could Dedicate An Entire Evening Focused On The Global Refugee Crisis, Focused Primarily On Afghanistan.

Writing Fiction Is The Act Of Weaving A Series Of Lies To Arrive At A Greater Truth.

She Is Furious With Herself For Her Own Stupidity. Opening Herself Up Like This, Voluntarily, To A Lifetime Of Worry And Anguish. It Was Madness. Sheer Lunacy. A Spectacularly Foolish And Baseless Faith, Against Enormous Odds, That A World You Do Not Control Will Not Take From You The One Thing You Cannot Bear To Lose. Faith That The World Will Not Destroy You.

Sometimes The Shifting Of Rocks Is Deep, Deep Below, And It's Powerful And Scary Down There, But That All We Feel On The Surface Is A Slight Tremor. Only A Slight Tremor.

Afghanistan Is A Rural Nation, Where 85 Percent Of People Live In The Countryside. And Out There It's Very, Very Conservative, Very Tribal - Almost Medieval.

[barack Obama] Is Sending More Troops [to Afghanistan], But They Have Also Realized That We Are Not Going To Win That War Through Guns And Tanks. We Have To Engage The Neighbors, And It Is Good That There Is A Non-military Strategy In Addition To A Military Strategy. It Is, At Least, Encouraging. Whether It Will Work Or Not, The Jury Is Still Put.

It's Hard When You Make A Film From A Book That So Many People Love, Because There's No Way To Get The Entire Story Into A Two-hour Movie. But I Was Pleased With The Reaction [for Kite Runner].

A Part Of Me Was Hoping Someone Would Wake Up And Hear, So I Wouldn't Have To Live With This Lie Anymore. But No One Woke Up And In The Silence That Followed, I Understood The Nature Of My New Curse: I Was Going To Get Away With It.

I Opened My Mouth, Almost Said Something. Almost. The Rest Of My Life Might Have Turned Out Differently If I Had. But I Didn’t.

People Talk About Apathy, Especially In Developed Countries. We're Kind Of Lulled Into These Tranquil Lives, And We Are Pursuing Our Own Thing And There Is So Much Suffering On A Mass Scale Around The World That You Kind Of Become Fatalistic. You Might Think Suffering Is Inevitable, You Kind Of Lose Your Sense Of Moral Urgency. But There Is Always Something You Can Do For Someone In The World.

She Held Her Breath, And In Her Head, Counted Seconds. She Pretended That For Each Second She Didn’t Breathe, God Would Grant Her Another Day

She Said, 'i'm So Afraid.' And I Said, 'why?,' And She Said, 'because I'm So Profoundly Happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness Like This Is Frightening.' I Asked Her Why And She Said, 'they Only Let You Be This Happy If They're Preparing To Take Something From You.

The Warlords Took Part In Atrocities During The Civil War In Afghanistan. They Looted, They Raped, They Killed. They Have Become Incredibly Empowered And Entrenched. They Live In Mansions, They Have Jobs In The Government, And They're Incredibly Powerful. In Kabul, People Don't Want To Speak About It Too Publicly, Because These People Are Essentially Like Tony Soprano.

You See, Some Things I Can Teach You. Some You Learn From Books. But There Are Things That, Well, You Have To See And Feel.

Sad Stories Make Good Books

At Times , He Didn't Understand The Meaning Of The Koran's Words . But He Said He Liked The Enhancing Sounds The Arabic Words Made As They Rolled Off His Tongue . He Said They Comforted Him , Eased His Heart . "they'll Comfort You Too . Mrariam Jo , " He Said . "you Can Summon Then In Your Time Of Your Need , And They Won't Fail You . God's Words Will Never Betray You , My Girl . (pg.17)

[kite Runner And A Thousand Splendid Suns] Is Not Just Unique To Books, But Films And Music.

There Are, However, Those Who Have Called The Book [the Kite Runner] Divisive And Objected To Some Of The Issues Raised In The Book, Namely Racism, Discrimination, Ethnic Inequality Etc.

I Will Say That There Is An Inordinate Amount Of Medicine In My Novels, Especially The First One. There Are A Lot Of Medical Things That Happen. A Hip Fracture, Three Different Kinds Of Lung Cancer, Pneumonia, Blood Poisoning, And So On.

It Was The Kind Of Love That, Sooner Or Later, Cornered You Into A Choice: Either You Tore Free Or You Stayed And Withstood Its Rigor Even As It Squeezed You Into Something Smaller Than Yourself.

Blood Is A Powerful Thing

A Man's Heart Is A Wretched, Wretched Thing. It Isn't Like A Mother's Womb. It Won't Bleed. It Won't Stretch To Make Room For You.

You Can Not Stop You From Being Who You Are.

Human Behavior Is Messy And Unpredictable And Unconcerned With Convenient Symmetries.

I Don't Know What This Feather Means, The Story Of It, But I Know It Means He Was Thinking Of Me. For All These Years. He Remembered Me.

The Bewildering Success Of My Books Continues To Surprise Me.

People Learned To Live With The Most Unimaginable Things.

Afghanistan Has Always Been Sort Of A Fractured Nation, Very Tribal, Where The Countryside And The Distant Provinces Have Been Run By Custom, By Tribal Law And By Tribal Leaders Rather Than Edicts From The Central Government In Kabul.

Now, No Matter What The Mullah Teaches, There Is Only One Sin, Only One. And That Is Theft. Every Other Sin Is A Variation Of Theft.

We [in The Khaled Hosseini Foundation] Support And Fund Projects That Bring Jobs, Healthcare, And Education To Women And Children. In Addition, We Award Scholarships To Women Pursuing Higher Education In Afghanistan.

The Novel [the Kite Runner] Came About As An Expansion Of That Original, Unpublished Short Story.

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

Dr. Bashiri, If I Ever Want To Put A Curse In Someone, I Say, 'may God Give You A Restaurant.

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