I foresaw my life unfolding as an interminable stretch of nothingness and so I spent my years on Tinos floundering, feeling like a stand-in for myself, a proxy, as though my real self resided elsewhere, waiting to unite someday with this dimmer, more hollow self. I felt marooned. An exile in my own home

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything

some stories don't need telling

I think the changes that have happened, there have been come positive, but by and large, you have to say the changes have been negative. The situation has reached a fairly critical stage in Afghanistan.

Nothing happens in a vacuum in life: every action has a series of consequences, and sometimes it takes a long time to fully understand the consequences of our actions.

For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.

The Kite Runner is a story of two boys and a father, and the strange love triangle that binds them.