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" 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. "

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" My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal. "

Khaled Hosseini

Memories

Country

" 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. "

" My wife is my in-home editor and reads everything I write. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" I find myself drawn to that period where children are about to leave childhood behind. When you're 12 years old, you still have one foot in childhood; the other is poised to enter a completely new stage of life. Your innocent understanding of the world moves towards something messier and more complicated, and once it does you can never go back. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You don't need a cheerleader. That's the worst thing that can happen to you. "

" 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. "

" I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift. "

" 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. "

" Writing for me is largely about rewriting. "

Khaled Hosseini

Rewriting

Writing

" 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

" There isn't, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry. "

" Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions. "

" You have to be able to interact with people whose politics you disagree with. "

" 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. "

" The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems. "

" People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" I'm so fascinated by how people destroy each other and love each other. "

" 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. "

" Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period. "

Khaled Hosseini

Kept

Read

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

" 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. "