I read actual physical books and have thus far avoided the electronic lure.
Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.
People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections.
My wife is my in-home editor and reads everything I write.
Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.
Kabul was very popular with the hippies in the Sixties and Seventies. It was very quiet and peaceful.
I was good at being a doctor; my patients liked me. At times people trust you with things they wouldn’t tell their spouses. It was a real privilege.
I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.
I’m a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ordinary things.
A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.
The finger cut, to save the hand.
Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks.
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.
Hassan couldn’t read a first-grade textbook but he’d read me plenty. That was a little unsettling but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed.
Her eyes, walnut brown and shaded by fanned lashes, met mine. Held for a moment. Flew away.
For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose.
I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love: privately, intensely, and without recourse.
I think he loved us equally, but differently.
After all, life is not a Hindi movie.
It’s wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don’t know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.