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

At that moment, she cannot think of a more reckless, irrational thing than choosing to become a parent.

Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.

And that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.

When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color.

i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin.

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. So what I know about writing, I know from my own instincts, and whatever the narrative voice is in my own head.