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" I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting. "
Khaled Hosseini
Write
Find
I Write
Related Quotes:
" Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period. "
Khaled Hosseini
Kept
More
Read
" You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And yet, by the time this idea passes through the different filters of your mind, and into your hand, and onto the page or computer screen - it becomes distorted, and it's been diminished. "
Khaled Hosseini
True
Time
Page
" Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it's either before or after they've blown something up. "
Khaled Hosseini
Before
Either
Pray
" The deal is such that when I begin writing something, I open a door, and those characters come in, and then they won't leave, and so I live with them every day, all day. They are there with me when I'm driving my kids to school, when I'm standing in line at the grocery store. "
Khaled Hosseini
School
Day
Writing
" Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess. "
Khaled Hosseini
Time
Impossible
Know
" Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work. "
Khaled Hosseini
Act
Active
Reading
" One of the things novels should do is shine a light on those parts of us that are common, the fibres that connect all of us. They should convey the sense that we're all connected, coming from the same tree, sharing common roots. "
Khaled Hosseini
Light
Roots
Same
" 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
" I am always revolted when Islamic leaders, from Afghanistan or elsewhere, deny the very existence of female oppression, avoid the issue by pointing to examples of what they view as Western mistreatment of women, or even worse, justify the oppression of women on the basis of notions derived from Sharia law. "
Khaled Hosseini
I Am
Oppression
View
" 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 have this almost pathological fear of boring the reader. "
Khaled Hosseini
Reader
Boring
Almost
" For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. "
Khaled Hosseini
Represent
Burden
Culture
" 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 don't think she is underappreciated, certainly not among writers, but Alice Munro is the classic underappreciated writer among readers. It is almost a cliche now to wonder why this living legend is not more widely read. "
Khaled Hosseini
Think
She
Now
" There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle. "
Khaled Hosseini
Always
Struggle
Easy
" I grew up around a lot of Rumi, Hafez and Omar Khayyam books. My parents in Kabul had all the volumes around the house. "
Khaled Hosseini
Parents
House
Books
" 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
" The only two places where I can read for long stretches are in airplanes and in bed at nighttime. "
Khaled Hosseini
Bed
I Can
Long
" Afghanistan is doomed if women are barred once again from public life. "
Khaled Hosseini
Public
Women
Afghanistan
" The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Success
Surprise
" 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
" 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
" 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 never thought what I wrote was good enough to be published. I thought of myself as completely detached from that constellation of real writers. It was completely for myself. "
Khaled Hosseini
Real
Thought
Myself
" You must not believe your own PR; it would be grotesque. "
Khaled Hosseini
Your
You
Would
" Writing for me is largely about rewriting. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Rewriting
Writing
" I lay no claim, it should be clear, to being a historian. So in my books, the intimate and personal have been intertwined inextricably with the broad and historical. "
Khaled Hosseini
Historical
Clear
Personal
" 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
" I do live with the very real possibility that we don't have endless stories to tell. "
Khaled Hosseini
Stories
Tell
Very
" The strange dilemma of the 'ethnic-fiction' writer is that you are supposed to carry a banner for your homeland, be a voice for it, and educate the rest of the world about it, but I think that's far too onerous a burden for any writer to bear. "
Khaled Hosseini
World
Think
Voice