Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.

I think the scale of the conflict [in Afghanistan] has dramatically changed in 2003. You're now facing a much more motivated, well-supported enemy. I don't see any quick end to this thing.

So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one.

you say you have no courage, but i see it in you. what you did, the burden you agreed to shoulder, took courage. for that, i honor you.

There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again. I was entirely absorbed in that world as I wrote the book [The Kite Runner] and to see the final page of that manuscript whir out of the printer was a very special feeling indeed.

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.

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