The truth is that no one who hasn't actually experienced the senseless chaos and violence of combat can possibly understand it, but those who have and who try to explain it to the rest of us are offering us a precious gift: a part of their soul that's been scorched in the flames of Hell. It's a little like trying to describe music to the deaf or color to the blind ... to make the irrational somewhat sensible, which is always confusing and frustrating, and ultimately futile.

There isn't, even now, a great tradition of novel-writing in Afghanistan. Most of the literature is in the form of poetry.

Whether you do something or decide to do nothing, either way, you are making a moral choice. And I hope people make the right one.

these random unkind moment that catch you wen you least expect them.

I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting.

A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated.

Though The Kite Runner was my first completed novel, I had been writing on and off for most of my life, primarily short stories, and primarily for myself.