I'm fascinated by the way early experiences haunt and revisit you, remain present in your life for decades and decades - they can even shape who you ultimately become.

It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all.

In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst.

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

Everyone is an ocean inside. Every individual walking the street. Everyone is a universe of thoughts, and insights, and feelings. But every person is crippled in his or her own way by our inability to truly present ourselves to the world.

In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.