My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal.

Her impulse, her need, to be the corrector of injustices, warden of the downtrodden flock. And

Inside Laila too a battle was being waged : guilt on one side, partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction that what she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had been natural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by the knowledge that they might never see each other again.

There [in The Kite Runner] certainly are, as is always the case with fiction, autobiographical elements woven through the narrative.

But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.

The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read.

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