Khaled Hosseini Quotes

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Khaled Hosseini

Profession : Novelist

Birth : March 4, 1965

Family is so central to Afghan life that all Afghan stories are family stories. Family is something I simply can't resist because all the great themes of human life - duty, grief, sacrifice, love, envy - you find all those things within families.

Khaled Hosseini

When I go to Afghanistan, I realize I've been spared, due to a random genetic lottery, by being born to people who had the means to get out. Every time I go to Afghanistan I am haunted by that.

Khaled Hosseini

My memories of Kabul are vastly different than the way it is when I go there now. My memories are of the final years before everything changed. When I grew up in Kabul, it couldn't be mistaken for Beirut or Tehran, as it was still in a country that's essentially religious and conservative, but it was suprisingly progressive and liberal.

Khaled Hosseini

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

Khaled Hosseini

Whatever the readers feel when they're reading my books, I feel it tenfold when I'm writing it.

Khaled Hosseini

I am always revolted when Islamic leaders, from Afghanistan or elsewhere, deny the very existence of female oppression, avoid the issue by pointing to examples of what they view as Western mistreatment of women, or even worse, justify the oppression of women on the basis of notions derived from Sharia law.

Khaled Hosseini

One of the things novels should do is shine a light on those parts of us that are common, the fibres that connect all of us. They should convey the sense that we're all connected, coming from the same tree, sharing common roots.

Khaled Hosseini

Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval.

Khaled Hosseini

A doctor in a hospital told me that when the mujaheddin were fighting in the early Nineties, he often performed amputations and Caesarean sections without anesthesia because there were no supplies.

Khaled Hosseini

I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well.

Khaled Hosseini

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess.

Khaled Hosseini

Afghan people are just so tired of war.

Khaled Hosseini

You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not.

Khaled Hosseini

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word.

Khaled Hosseini

I remember reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' in high school in 1983. My family had immigrated to the U.S. three years before, and I had spent the better part of the first two years learning English. John Steinbeck's book was the first book I read in English where I had an 'Aha!' moment, namely in the famed turtle chapter.

Khaled Hosseini

The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.

Khaled Hosseini

I think that to fully appreciate baseball, it helps to have been born in the U.S.

Khaled Hosseini

I give novels as gifts, and there is nothing I like to receive more as a gift.

Khaled Hosseini

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

Khaled Hosseini

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing.

Khaled Hosseini