Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.

Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?

cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same colour.

There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again. I was entirely absorbed in that world as I wrote the book [The Kite Runner] and to see the final page of that manuscript whir out of the printer was a very special feeling indeed.

She was an extraordinary woman, and I went to bed that night feeling like I was perhaps more than ordinary myself. This was the effect she had on me.

I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.

There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.