Now, especially in public places, you always have that unease. When the children were cast, if I thought that they might be victims of violence because of participating in this movie, we would have chosen children from outside this country.

Dr. Bashiri, if I ever want to put a curse in someone, I say, 'May God give you a restaurant.

The story line of my novel [The Kite Runner] is largely fictional. The characters were invented and the plot imagined.

After all, life is not a Hindi movie.

My father and I did work for a while at the flea market and there really are rows of Afghans working there, some of whom I am related to.

If there was a God, he'd guide the winds, let them blow for me so that, with a tug of my string, I'd cut loose my pain, my longing.

I wanted to tell them that, in Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and used it as a credit card. Hassan and I would take the wooden stick to the bread maker. He'd carve notches on our stick with his knife, one notch for each loaf of naan he'd pull for us from the tandoor's roaring flames. At the end of the month, my father paid him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions. No ID.