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

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

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 think the scale of the conflict [in Afghanistan] has dramatically changed in 2003. You're now facing a much more motivated, well-supported enemy. I don't see any quick end to this thing.

Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.