The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
The story line of my novel [The Kite Runner] is largely fictional. The characters were invented and the plot imagined.
Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'
Whenever I run out of people to write about, I cook up a few ghosts, or they appear before me.
Everyone thinks I live alone, but I don't. My characters all live with me.
Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention.
I don't think I was particularly in need of superheroes. I never had any fascination with Superman or Spider-Man or a Batman kind of character. If it happened at all, it was imagined characters that I had invented. My dad was a role model for me. He was a fascinating man. There was intrigue and entertainment growing up with him. He gave me an edict that I still pursue: “Life should never be boring."
I think everybody is allowed, especially when they're telling a story, as long as it's not based on somebody's real life, you're allowed a certain liberty.
