Khaled Hosseini Quotes

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Khaled Hosseini

Profession : Novelist

Birth : March 4, 1965

The strange dilemma of the 'ethnic-fiction' writer is that you are supposed to carry a banner for your homeland, be a voice for it, and educate the rest of the world about it, but I think that's far too onerous a burden for any writer to bear.

Khaled Hosseini

Too often, stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism. Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves - their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.

Khaled Hosseini

There's no excuse for the macro corruption, but Afghanistan was always an informal society with a weak central government.

Khaled Hosseini

I never thought what I wrote was good enough to be published. I thought of myself as completely detached from that constellation of real writers. It was completely for myself.

Khaled Hosseini

You don't need a cheerleader. That's the worst thing that can happen to you.

Khaled Hosseini

When I went to Kabul - weeks after I finished 'The Kite Runner' - I met a lot of people from all walks of life: men, women, children, people from ministries, hotel doormen, shopkeepers. And I learned from them what daily life was like when the rockets were flying overhead.

Khaled Hosseini

I hear from non-Afghan immigrants - Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs in France - all the time. These people have had to redefine their lives, which is what my family went through when we came to the U.S. in 1980.

Khaled Hosseini

My parents were reasonably affluent in Kabul. In the States, we were on welfare. My mom became a waitress, and my dad became a driving instructor. That part of the American immigrant experience applies to people of any nationality.

Khaled Hosseini

Afghanistan is doomed if women are barred once again from public life.

Khaled Hosseini

Everything for me starts very small and snowballs. So I rarely start with the grand idea and find a place for it and narrow down. It's, really, just start small, and as I'm writing it, I begin to see - sometimes to my own surprise - what's unfolding and what's blooming.

Khaled Hosseini

I've learned things about the craft of writing and about structuring a book and about character development and so on that I've just learned on the fly.

Khaled Hosseini

The deal is such that when I begin writing something, I open a door, and those characters come in, and then they won't leave, and so I live with them every day, all day. They are there with me when I'm driving my kids to school, when I'm standing in line at the grocery store.

Khaled Hosseini

In my 20s, life seemed endless. At 49, I've had a chance to see how dark life can be, and I am far more aware of the constraints of time than when I wrote 'The Kite Runner.' I realise there is only a limited number of things I can do.

Khaled Hosseini

I hate resting. I feel restless. My preference is to be working.

Khaled Hosseini

My books never go where I think they're going.

Khaled Hosseini

You must not believe your own PR; it would be grotesque.

Khaled Hosseini

I would like people to have an appreciation for what happened to women under the Taliban, as in 'A Thousand Splendid Suns.' I hope they get a sense of how connected we all are.

Khaled Hosseini

My freshman year in college, I got a job working security. This was a high-tech building in Santa Clara, engineers coming in and out all the time.

Khaled Hosseini

I don't remember how I picked up 'Different Seasons,' but it was a book I read on a grave shift. I was absolutely floored by it; 'The Body,' a story about kids who go searching for a corpse in the woods, impacted me especially.

Khaled Hosseini

I find myself drawn to that period where children are about to leave childhood behind. When you're 12 years old, you still have one foot in childhood; the other is poised to enter a completely new stage of life.

Khaled Hosseini