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.

By then The Kite Runner had become quite successful and I found myself in a position that I had always dreamed of my whole life, which was to write for a living.

I found a sad little fairy Beneath the shade of a paper tree. I know a sad little fairy Who was blown away by the wind one night.

We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.

There will be no floating waway. There will be no other reality tonight.

After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life; one disappointing son and two suitcases.

A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated.