But if you have a book that needs urgent reading,' she said, 'then Hakim is your man.

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

Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

I don't know the nuts and bolts of writing. I studied medicine. I was a pre-med nerd. So everything I learned, I know about writing is very instinctive.

I feel like we [americans] are a unique nation in this world, in that we are able to implement great change in our society over a relatively short period of time. What takes centuries in Europe, we accomplish in a generation.

In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity.

[Flying kite with my friends] is one of the seminal memories of growing up for me.