The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.

All my life, she gave to me a shovel and said, Fill these holes inside of me, Pari.

Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.

If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar.

Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.

We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.

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 The novel [The Kite Runner] came about as an expansion of that original, unpublished short story.