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" Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period. "
Khaled Hosseini
Kept
More
Read
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" I don't remember how I picked up 'Different Seasons,' but it was a book I read on a grave shift. I was absolutely floored by it; 'The Body,' a story about kids who go searching for a corpse in the woods, impacted me especially. "
Khaled Hosseini
Seasons
Story
Woods
" 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 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 don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting. "
Khaled Hosseini
Write
Find
I Write
" I do live with the very real possibility that we don't have endless stories to tell. "
Khaled Hosseini
Stories
Tell
Very
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. "
Khaled Hosseini
Represent
Burden
Culture
" 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 freshman year in college, I got a job working security. This was a high-tech building in Santa Clara, engineers coming in and out all the time. "
Khaled Hosseini
Job
Security
Time
" My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters. "
Khaled Hosseini
Easy
Romantic
Love
" 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
" Afghan people are just so tired of war. "
Khaled Hosseini
Tired
People
Just
" The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Success
Surprise
" I read actual physical books and have thus far avoided the electronic lure. "
Khaled Hosseini
Far
Books
Electronic
" 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
" The jury is out as to whether the Afghans are up to the task of protecting their people. "
Khaled Hosseini
Jury
Whether
Up
" 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
" I hate resting. I feel restless. My preference is to be working. "
Khaled Hosseini
Feel
Hate
Resting
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 must not believe your own PR; it would be grotesque. "
Khaled Hosseini
Your
You
Would
" 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
" My books never go where I think they're going. "
Khaled Hosseini
Go
Going
Books
" 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
" 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