If culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, [and] to all rooms inside.

Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.

In March of 2001, I revisited the short story, and found that thought it did not work well as a short story, it might work much better as a longer one. The novel [The Kite Runner] came about as an expansion of that original, unpublished short story.

War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.

I also felt The Kite Runner was a story that would lend itself well to a visual retelling in a graphic novel.

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

But the game involves only male names. Because, if it's a girl, Laila has already named her