My books never go where I think they're going.
Interpretation
The author's writing journey often takes unexpected turns, revealing deeper insights than initially planned.
In this quote, Khaled Hosseini expresses the unpredictable nature of the creative process. When writing, he discovers that his thoughts and narratives evolve in ways he did not anticipate, leading to richer and more profound stories than he initially envisioned. This highlights the organic nature of storytelling, where characters and plot developments can take on lives of their own.
In practice
During a writing workshop, I used this quote to explain how unpredictable the writing process can be.
You're gutless. It's how you were made. And that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you've never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is... God help him.
There was brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that even time could not break. - Amir
I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.
And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.
The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.
However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory -not on the order of actual occurrence.
The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.
Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.
People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.
The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not respectable - but I think that can also add to the glory of it.
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
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