The story of what has happened to women in Afghanistan, however, is a very important one, and fertile ground for fiction.

There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.

My books are about ordinary people, like you, me, people on the street, people who really have an expectation of reasonable happiness in life, want their life to have a sense of security and predictability, who want to belong to something bigger than them, who want love and affection in their life, who want a good future for the children.

I think novelists, when they write their books, end up having occasionally serving a purpose and playing roles that they never really fully either intended or even understood.

Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.

In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.

I will say that there is an inordinate amount of medicine in my novels, especially the first one. There are a lot of medical things that happen. A hip fracture, three different kinds of lung cancer, pneumonia, blood poisoning, and so on.