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

Was there happiness at the end [of the movie], they wanted to know. If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab, and me ends with happiness, I wouldn't know what to say. Does anybody's? After all, life is not a Hindi movie. Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, undmindful of beginning, en, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.

hills that stand soft and a sky that stands high and blue, and the sun setting behind a windmill, and always, always, hazy strings of mountains that fall and fall away on the horizon.

Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock. And

For a novelist, it’s kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. That said, I’m in a unique position to speak on behalf of Afghanistan on certain issues that I feel are important, particularly the issue of Afghan refugees.

And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.

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. So what I know about writing, I know from my own instincts, and whatever the narrative voice is in my own head.