she held her breath, and in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second she didn’t breathe, God would grant her another day

It's wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don't know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.

You are never alone in Afghanistan. You are always in the company of others, usually family. You don't understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. Family is so central to your identity, to how you make sense of your world, it is very dramatic, and therefore an amazing source of storytelling, a source of fiction for me.

That's how children deal with terror, they fall asleep.

It's literally just been formed. It's a 501 C3, non-profit charitable foundation called, unsurprisingly, the Khalled Hosseini Foundation. The aim is to help refugees and aim vulnerable women and children.

It was you Nabi. It was always you. Didn't you know?

Without women taking an active role in Afghan society, rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be very difficult.