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" 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
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" Family is so central to Afghan life that all Afghan stories are family stories. Family is something I simply can't resist because all the great themes of human life - duty, grief, sacrifice, love, envy - you find all those things within families. "
Khaled Hosseini
Life
Envy
Love
" The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems. "
Khaled Hosseini
Difficulty
Writing
Successful
" I read actual physical books and have thus far avoided the electronic lure. "
Khaled Hosseini
Far
Books
Electronic
" In my 20s, life seemed endless. At 49, I've had a chance to see how dark life can be, and I am far more aware of the constraints of time than when I wrote 'The Kite Runner.' I realise there is only a limited number of things I can do. "
Khaled Hosseini
Chance
Time
Life
" I hate resting. I feel restless. My preference is to be working. "
Khaled Hosseini
Feel
Hate
Resting
" In many parts of the world, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need women to solve the problems that men create. "
Khaled Hosseini
Think
Men
Women
" No one ever really read to me as a child. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Read
Child
" 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
" 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
" You have to be able to interact with people whose politics you disagree with. "
Khaled Hosseini
Whose
Disagree
People
" 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
" Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work. "
Khaled Hosseini
Act
Active
Reading
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter. "
Khaled Hosseini
Moment
Learning
School
" I do live with the very real possibility that we don't have endless stories to tell. "
Khaled Hosseini
Stories
Tell
Very
" I was told bedtime stories by my father or my grandmother. Books, I mostly read on my own in bed. "
Khaled Hosseini
Father
Own
My Own
" 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
" Afghan people are just so tired of war. "
Khaled Hosseini
Tired
People
Just
" I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films. "
Khaled Hosseini
Quality
Way
Writing
" When I went to Kabul - weeks after I finished 'The Kite Runner' - I met a lot of people from all walks of life: men, women, children, people from ministries, hotel doormen, shopkeepers. And I learned from them what daily life was like when the rockets were flying overhead. "
Khaled Hosseini
Women
Daily
Hotel
" My books never go where I think they're going. "
Khaled Hosseini
Go
Going
Books
" 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
" The jury is out as to whether the Afghans are up to the task of protecting their people. "
Khaled Hosseini
Jury
Whether
Up
" 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
" There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle. "
Khaled Hosseini
Always
Struggle
Easy
" My parents were reasonably affluent in Kabul. In the States, we were on welfare. My mom became a waitress, and my dad became a driving instructor. That part of the American immigrant experience applies to people of any nationality. "
Khaled Hosseini
Experience
Mom
States
" Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period. "
Khaled Hosseini
Kept
More
Read