I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift.
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 don’t listen to music when I write – I find it distracting.
For a novelist, it’s kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.
Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history.
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.
Writing for me is largely about rewriting.
Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it’s either before or after they’ve blown something up.
I have a particular disdain for Islamic extremism, and of course, in both ‘The Kite Runner’ and ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ that’s obvious.
I have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader.
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.