Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks.

My own background is fairly liberal and so this notion of 'protecting women from outside intrusion' is not in my nature, nor in my upbringing.

I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting.

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

You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.

I wanted to write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan history.

It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.