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" There's no excuse for the macro corruption, but Afghanistan was always an informal society with a weak central government. "
Khaled Hosseini
Government
Corruption
Always
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" 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
" My books never go where I think they're going. "
Khaled Hosseini
Go
Going
Books
" 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
" 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
" 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
" There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle. "
Khaled Hosseini
Always
Struggle
Easy
" People find meaning and redemption in the most unusual human connections. "
Khaled Hosseini
Connections
Find
Meaning
" 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
Me
" 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
" Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work. "
Khaled Hosseini
Act
Active
Reading
" I'm so fascinated by how people destroy each other and love each other. "
Khaled Hosseini
Other
People
Love
" 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
" 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
" You don't need a cheerleader. That's the worst thing that can happen to you. "
Khaled Hosseini
Cheerleader
You
Happen
" 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
" 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
" 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
" The bewildering success of my books continues to surprise me. "
Khaled Hosseini
Me
Success
Surprise
" 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
" 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
" Afghanistan is doomed if women are barred once again from public life. "
Khaled Hosseini
Public
Women
Afghanistan
" I'm glad I wrote them when I did because I think if I were to write my first novel now, it would be a different book, and it may not be the book that everybody wants to read. But if I were given a red pen now, and I went back... I'd take that thing apart. "
Khaled Hosseini
Back
Think
Red
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Politics
Toil
Struggle
" 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 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Khaled Hosseini
Life
World
Myself