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" Read the kinds of things you want to write; read the kinds of things you would never write. Learn something from every writer you read. "
Khaled Hosseini
Things
Never
Learn
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" It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all. "
Khaled Hosseini
Fame
Life
Kind
" I'm a pretty uncomplicated person. I live a very simple life with my family and I enjoy very ordinary things. "
Khaled Hosseini
Live
Simple
Enjoy
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Go
Memories
Country
" Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves - their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles. "
Khaled Hosseini
Country
Precious
War
" My books never go where I think they're going. "
Khaled Hosseini
Go
Going
Books
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Wait
Choice
See
" Afghanistan is doomed if women are barred once again from public life. "
Khaled Hosseini
Public
Women
Afghanistan
" Writing for me is largely about rewriting. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Rewriting
Writing
" I felt on the periphery of high school culture; one of those invisible creatures that walk the campus. I think it was a lot worse for my parents. "
Khaled Hosseini
School
Think
Walk
" American high school culture was impenetrable to me, and very cliquey: you had the Hispanics, the African Americans, the surfer guys and the goths and the immigrants. The jocks and the surfers got the girls. By the time I'd got to grips with it, I'd graduated. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
American
Culture
" The jury is out as to whether the Afghans are up to the task of protecting their people. "
Khaled Hosseini
Jury
Whether
Up
" A doctor in a hospital told me that when the mujaheddin were fighting in the early Nineties, he often performed amputations and Caesarean sections without anesthesia because there were no supplies. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Doctor
Early
" I'm glad I wrote them when I did because I think if I were to write my first novel now, it would be a different book, and it may not be the book that everybody wants to read. But if I were given a red pen now, and I went back... I'd take that thing apart. "
Khaled Hosseini
Back
Think
Red
" Syria's neighboring countries cannot and should not carry the cost of caring for refugees on their own. The international community must share the burden with them by providing economic aid, investing in development in those countries, and opening their own borders to desperate Syrian families looking for protection. "
Khaled Hosseini
Caring
Own
Opening
" Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it's either before or after they've blown something up. "
Khaled Hosseini
Before
Either
Pray
" There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle. "
Khaled Hosseini
Always
Struggle
Easy
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
School
Training
Medical
" No one ever really read to me as a child. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Read
Child
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Life
Random
Sadness
" Everything for me starts very small and snowballs. So I rarely start with the grand idea and find a place for it and narrow down. It's, really, just start small, and as I'm writing it, I begin to see - sometimes to my own surprise - what's unfolding and what's blooming. "
Khaled Hosseini
Start
Writing
Surprise
" I landed in Kabul the day before Shock and Awe in Iraq, and you could all but hear the collective groan. "
Khaled Hosseini
Day
Awe
Before
" My wife is my in-home editor and reads everything I write. "
Khaled Hosseini
Wife
Editor
Everything
" Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work. "
Khaled Hosseini
Act
Active
Reading
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Say
Medicine
Three
" I'm fascinated by the way early experiences haunt and revisit you, remain present in your life for decades and decades - they can even shape who you ultimately become. "
Khaled Hosseini
Become
You
Way
" To me, families are puzzles that take a lifetime to work out - or not, as often is the case - and I like to explore how people within them try to connect, be it through love, duty, or circumstance. "
Khaled Hosseini
People
Duty
Love
" You don't need a cheerleader. That's the worst thing that can happen to you. "
Khaled Hosseini
Cheerleader
You
Happen
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Walking
Thoughts
Ocean
" I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift. "
Khaled Hosseini
Nothing
Gift
Gifts
" I have a particular disdain for Islamic extremism, and of course, in both 'The Kite Runner' and 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' that's obvious. "
Khaled Hosseini
Thousand
Kite
Extremism