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

Khaled Hosseini

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" 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

" Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it. "

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

" 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. "

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

" 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

" Writing for me is largely about rewriting. "

Khaled Hosseini

" I've been told, and I think I recognize it, that there's a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene - and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films. "

Khaled Hosseini

" I was told bedtime stories by my father or my grandmother. Books, I mostly read on my own in bed. "

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

" I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time. "

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

" 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. "

Khaled Hosseini

" I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. "

Khaled Hosseini

" I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well. "

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

" 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. "

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

" I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. "

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

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

Khaled Hosseini

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

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

" I've learned things about the craft of writing and about structuring a book and about character development and so on that I've just learned on the fly. "

Khaled Hosseini

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Khaled Hosseini

" When I went to Kabul - weeks after I finished 'The Kite Runner' - I met a lot of people from all walks of life: men, women, children, people from ministries, hotel doormen, shopkeepers. And I learned from them what daily life was like when the rockets were flying overhead. "

Khaled Hosseini

" In my 20s, life seemed endless. At 49, I've had a chance to see how dark life can be, and I am far more aware of the constraints of time than when I wrote 'The Kite Runner.' I realise there is only a limited number of things I can do. "

Khaled Hosseini