I get daily e-mails from Afghans who thank me for writing this book [The Kite Runner], as they feel a slice of their story has been told by one of their own. So, for the most part, I have been overwhelmed with the kindness of my fellow Afghans.
It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you.
Big stories need human stakes.
Often, if I read a story and I'm moved, I have an understanding for a character and I don't really know why.
Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?
A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.
What you care about [movie] is whether it's moving you, or whether you're caught up in it.
It's very interesting how life imitates art, and art imitates life; I find, whenever I read scenes of some magnitude, I'm like, 'Oh, I feel like I've experienced this,' or 'I am experiencing this,' or 'I might start to experience it soon.'
Mere recording of an event will not make it a historical document. It will become obsolete with time. Only those that emotionally connect with the audience will stand the test of time.
Movies have these transcendent moments where everything is just right, from the dialogue to the music to the lighting to the narrative context; everything is just perfect, and something magical happens - the film breaks through the screen and does something to you.
I don't like to talk about messages so much with films simply because it's a little more didactic. The reason I'm a filmmaker is to tell stories and so you hope that they will have resonance for people and for the kind of things you're talking about.
I'm often drawn in by a description of a woman thinking something familiar that's never been articulated before, as in Diane Cook's 'Somebody's Baby' or Nina Berberova's 'The Tattered Cloak.'
I think there has to be an empathic strike between the reader and the protagonist. There has to be something said or known that connects the reader to this person you're going to ride through the story with.
People want real-life stories.
What is most important to me is that my narrator's voice is believable, and that, though it is clearly an absolute fiction, it has the emotional resonance of memoir.
If the human story in 'STM' is relatable, it will work.
Every story takes its toll on me and leaves an impression on me.
I like to be able to understand the feeling of the director, that a film corresponds to something in his life. Otherwise, it doesn't interest me much.
There's this amplification that happens anytime you tell a story. You let it go out into the world. It's the most beautiful thing. All I can do is look at it in wonder and amazement.
When I finished 'Cocktail,' it took me a very long time to get out of Veronica's mindspace, behaviour, and zone. I had to reconnect with who I am. It is a similar story with 'Bajirao Mastani.' Some films demand that.
Miss the audience's heart as a filmmaker, and the only wallet that gets hit will be your own. That's because the heart is always the first target in story telling.
No, I only like whether I like the story or not, essentially see something in it that isn't completely there.
One thing I learned is that the park by the river in a recent story, 'Getting Closer,' is the same park by the river that appears for a moment near the end of 'The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad,' a story first published 23 years earlier. This echo at first irritated me, then pleased me deeply.
I can't honestly account for the very personal response that I have to one story and not another, a sense of an orbit, the orbit of a world that draws me as my own life recedes.
I think there's a natural link between the fact that our self is a story that we make up and that we're drawn to stories. It resonates, in a way.
