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

and yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.

Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her.

All stories I write are compulsive. Anything I’ve ever written was because I don’t have a choice. I write stories because I can’t wait to tell it, I can’t wait to see how it ends.

My own background is fairly liberal and so this notion of 'protecting women from outside intrusion' is not in my nature, nor in my upbringing.

She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

People talk about apathy, especially in developed countries. We're kind of lulled into these tranquil lives, and we are pursuing our own thing and there is so much suffering on a mass scale around the world that you kind of become fatalistic. You might think suffering is inevitable, you kind of lose your sense of moral urgency. But there is always something you can do for someone in the world.