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" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Nation
Conservative
Live
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" I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. "
Khaled Hosseini
People
Got
Book
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Doctor
Good
Me
" Writing for me is largely about rewriting. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Rewriting
Writing
" 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
" For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda. "
Khaled Hosseini
Story
Ideas
Down
" The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems. "
Khaled Hosseini
Difficulty
Writing
Successful
" 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
" I hear from non-Afghan immigrants - Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs in France - all the time. These people have had to redefine their lives, which is what my family went through when we came to the U.S. in 1980. "
Khaled Hosseini
Time
People
Family
" I read actual physical books and have thus far avoided the electronic lure. "
Khaled Hosseini
Far
Books
Electronic
" I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way. "
Khaled Hosseini
Own
Surprise
Way
" I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S. "
Khaled Hosseini
Born
Think
Baseball
" I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting. "
Khaled Hosseini
Write
Find
I Write
" Qualities you need to get through medical school and residency: Discipline. Patience. Perseverance. A willingness to forgo sleep. A penchant for sadomasochism. Ability to weather crises of faith and self-confidence. Accept exhaustion as fact of life. Addiction to caffeine a definite plus. Unfailing optimism that the end is in sight. "
Khaled Hosseini
Faith
Perseverance
Life
" I do live with the very real possibility that we don't have endless stories to tell. "
Khaled Hosseini
Stories
Tell
Very
" In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst. "
Khaled Hosseini
You
Relationship
Love
" 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
" My wife is my in-home editor and reads everything I write. "
Khaled Hosseini
Wife
Editor
Everything
" 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
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Happiness
Children
Love
" 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
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Think
Back
Experience
" Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah, too? Do McCain and Palin think there's something wrong with my name? "
Khaled Hosseini
Wrong
View
Two
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Long
Life
Consequences
" Afghan people are just so tired of war. "
Khaled Hosseini
Tired
People
Just
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Random
Time
People
" I hate resting. I feel restless. My preference is to be working. "
Khaled Hosseini
Feel
Hate
Resting
" The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Success
Surprise
" I would like people to have an appreciation for what happened to women under the Taliban, as in 'A Thousand Splendid Suns.' I hope they get a sense of how connected we all are. "
Khaled Hosseini
People
Women
Like
" Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history. "
Khaled Hosseini
History
Think
Suffering
" 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