Khaled Hosseini Quotes

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.

I never, ever decided that I had to write a novel because, to me, there's no such decision that ought to be made. It's only something that I felt compelled to do, and it began to evolve.

Once I started to write, it was like all the lights came on. I was always making up stories in my head. I was a daydreamer. I didn't start as a child, but once I started, I couldn't stop. It was compulsive.

I even dream about writing. I'm talking seeing words across the page, whole paragraphs.

I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.

I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer.

What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write.

Once I finished 'Eileen,' I wanted to write more novels. I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

I hope the wonder of what happens to my characters never goes away. That yearning keeps me writing.

I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.

From the beginning, when I first got an idea for a story and wondered if I could write it, it has always been the story that has driven me.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

I wasn't sitting around years ago thinking, 'I really want to write a novel.'

I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that relentless desire to write has to come from within.

Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start.

A writer is always, always searching, even against her will, against all her better instincts, for the thread of a story. Everything is fodder. Everything is fuel. You can feel it coming on like the tingling of a sore throat. The brain never stops struggling to reshape every experience and feeling into a coherent narrative.

My next book - each one while I'm working on it - dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn. If it didn't, why would I write it?

True confession time: I never know where a book is going. I get a gut feeling the story is there, then pursue it with the enthusiasm of a hunting tiger on a trail. If I knew where I was going, I'd get bored out of my mind and stop writing.

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.

I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.