I have been involved with the UN refugee agency for a few years now, and we have done events to speak about refugees, focusing more and more on the situation with Afghan refugees.

Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.

I came from an educated, upper middle-class family. My mother was a Persian and history teacher at a large high school for girls. Many of the women in my extended family and in our circle of friends were professionals. In those days, women were a vital part of the economy in Kabul. They worked as lawyers, physicians, college professors, etc., which makes the tragedy of how they were treated by the Taliban that much more painful.

Mostly, though, I dream of good things...I dream that flowers will bloom in the streets..again and music will play in the...houses and kites will fly in the skies.

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.

I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it’s that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it’s going to work. It’s astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those first two weeks.