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" 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

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" The only two places where I can read for long stretches are in airplanes and in bed at nighttime. "

" 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

" You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not. "

Khaled Hosseini

Write

You

" My books never go where I think they're going. "

Khaled Hosseini

Going

Books

" I - and, I suspect, millions of Americans like me, Republicans and Democrats alike - couldn't care less about Obama's middle name or the ridiculous six-degrees-of-separation game that is the William Ayers non-issue. "

Khaled Hosseini

Name

Care

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" Writing for me is largely about rewriting. "

Khaled Hosseini

Rewriting

Writing

" 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. "

" You must not believe your own PR; it would be grotesque. "

" Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history. "

" 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. "

" The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me. "

Khaled Hosseini

Success

Surprise

" 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. "

" No one ever really read to me as a child. "

Khaled Hosseini

Read

Child

" Ultimately, my books are not about the politics, although the toil and the struggle and the wars in Afghanistan have a significant impact on the lives of my characters. "

" I landed in Kabul the day before Shock and Awe in Iraq, and you could all but hear the collective groan. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. "

" Usually in films, when Muslims pray, it's either before or after they've blown something up. "

" Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work. "

" 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

American

Culture

" 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. "

" Kabul was very popular with the hippies in the Sixties and Seventies. It was very quiet and peaceful. "

" 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. "

" 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. "