What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.

I think the emancipation of women in Afghanistan has to come from inside, through Afghans themselves, gradually, over time.

I started a foundation, called The Khaled Hosseini Foundation. The mission has been to help the most vulnerable groups in Afghanistan. So the focus has been on women, children, and homeless refugees, most of whom are in fact women and children.

Kabul was very popular with the hippies in the Sixties and Seventies. It was very quiet and peaceful.

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.

I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.

You are never alone in Afghanistan. You are always in the company of others, usually family. You don't understand yourself really as an individual, you understand yourself as part of something bigger than yourself. Family is so central to your identity, to how you make sense of your world, it is very dramatic, and therefore an amazing source of storytelling, a source of fiction for me.