A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.

Literature and film have a way of lifting you from your own existence and transporting you to some foreign place and putting you in the shoes with an experience different than your own.

The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip.

The novel [The Kite Runner] came about as an expansion of that original, unpublished short story.

It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

There are, however, those who have called the book [The Kite Runner] divisive and objected to some of the issues raised in the book, namely racism, discrimination, ethnic inequality etc.

It's tremendous what can happen when suddenly you make an emotional connection.