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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
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" The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Success
Surprise
" People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections. "
Khaled Hosseini
Connections
Find
Meaning
" A Western-style democracy in Afghanistan is a dream. I don't see that as a reality anytime soon. But I think some form of representative political process is not that far-fetched. "
Khaled Hosseini
Democracy
Political
Think
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems. "
Khaled Hosseini
Difficulty
Writing
Successful
" 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 do live with the very real possibility that we don't have endless stories to tell. "
Khaled Hosseini
Stories
Tell
Very
" 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
" I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting. "
Khaled Hosseini
Write
Find
I Write
" 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 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
" Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It's something I've revisited a few times in my writings. "
Khaled Hosseini
People
Used
Write
" For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. "
Khaled Hosseini
Represent
Burden
Culture
" 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
" 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 spent a lot of winters in my childhood flying kites with my brother, with my cousins, with friends in the neighborhood. It's what we did in the winter. Schools close down. There was not much to do. "
Khaled Hosseini
Childhood
Winter
Down
" The Taliban's acts of cultural vandalism - the most infamous being the destruction of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas - had a devastating effect on Afghan culture and the artistic scene. The Taliban burned countless films, VCRs, music tapes, books, and paintings. They jailed filmmakers, musicians, painters, and sculptors. "
Khaled Hosseini
Books
Giant
Music
" 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
" Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it. "
Khaled Hosseini
Reading
Feel
Books
" 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
" I hate resting. I feel restless. My preference is to be working. "
Khaled Hosseini
Feel
Hate
Resting
" 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
" 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
" 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
" You must not believe your own PR; it would be grotesque. "
Khaled Hosseini
Your
You
Would
" My books never go where I think they're going. "
Khaled Hosseini
Go
Going
Books
" 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