QUOTES by Mohsin Hamid
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I am a fairly mongrelized person - you know I've been a migrant my whole life, and it's hard to think of myself as any pure one thing. And so I take it, I guess, very personally - this notion that migrants are bad and that mixing is bad and that people from other places are bad.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
It's not that, living in Pakistan, I feel an enormous constraint on how I can write and what I can say; rather, I recognize that one has to navigate these things... Am I aware of things that one could say that would be risky or that could be dangerous? Certainly I'm aware of those things.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
In a sense, by closing off the idea that young Muslims, and particularly young Muslim men, can be American heroes, it increases the chance that they'll try to be some other kind of hero. And that, I think, is entirely counterproductive.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Outside of America, there are many people, myself included, who champion values that in some senses could be thought of as traditionally American: The idea that everybody is equal; the idea that the rights of women and men should be the same.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
I think that when we take the long view, the notion that some people are deemed less worthy of being able to move - to not have the right to cross borders - over time, that's going to seem as outmoded and as unfair, really, as racial discrimination or other kinds of discrimination.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Lived religion is a very different thing from strict textual analysis. Very few people of any faith live their lives as literalist interpretations of scripture.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Most Muslims do not 'choose' Islam in the way that they choose to become doctors or lawyers, nor even in the way that they choose to become fans of Coldplay or Radiohead. Most Muslims, like people of any faith, are born into their religion.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
I like the idea of an open, international London that thrives on attracting hard-working, talented people but has the confidence to tell them they must play by the same rules as everyone else.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Like many of my friends in the Pakistani diaspora - and many of my friends in Pakistan itself, for that matter - I have sometimes looked at the country of my birth and wondered whether its future will be one of steady and sad decline.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
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.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
For me, writing a novel is more like digging a well than climbing a mountain - some heroic thing where I set out to conquer. I just sit quietly for a few years, and then it starts to become something.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
If your sense of self is destabilised, to imagine being another becomes pretty easy.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
I'm not sure if guys are supposed to read Vanity Fair. I feel very metrosexual with it but am not sure it's in my comfort zone.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
I don't want to be a propagandist or say that Pakistan is just great. There are problems, but it is a much more complex place than we are given to believe.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
When people talk about the death of the novel, they are speaking of the need for the birth of something different.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
In Sufi terms, there are two very interesting notions of transcendence. One is to gaze out at the universe and to comprehend that what you see out there reflects what you are. The other one is to look inside yourself and recognise that the universe is present there.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Growing up in Pakistan in the 1980s, I lived in the shadow of a tyrannical state.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
America's strength has made it a sort of Gulliver in world affairs: By wiggling its toes it can, often inadvertently, break the arm of a Lilliputian.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Part of the reason people abroad resent the United States is something Americans can do very little about: envy. The richest, most powerful country in the world attracts the jealousy of others in much the same way that the richest, most powerful man in a small town attracts the jealousy of others.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
When I'm writing well, I feel happy. And when I go too long without writing, I begin to implode.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
There is a huge sense of loneliness as people leave villages and move to cities. It's hard to find that human connection as you move away from where you started.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Certainly, historically, there has been more attention given in the international media to Indian English-language writers than to Pakistani English-language writers. But that, in my opinion, was justified by the sheer number of excellent writers coming from India and the Indian diaspora.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
There are many cultural scenes in Lahore, just as there are in London. And there is a celebrity culture here, just as there is in London. But in Lahore, the celebrity scene doesn't drown out the rest quite so much.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
As a writer, I am constantly aware that I take my life in my hands with everything I do and say. It's just a fact of life. For me it always has been.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Pakistan hasn't been cast in the role of... interesting cultural place or, you know, land of great comedians.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Oftentimes I deliberately put ambiguity into my books so that... the reader is left with an echo of: 'How much of this was from me?'
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Being outside the candy store looking in is the state of people today. Whether you're in a Pakistani village watching somebody in a car drive by, or you're in the city of Lahore going to a restaurant and seeing somebody with a security entourage coming in... you're exposed to people with more.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
For a combination of reasons, and despite evident fondness for American products and individuals, my impression is that most Pakistanis have extremely negative views of the U.S. as a geopolitical player.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Chance plays a powerful role in every life - our brains and personalities are just chemical soup, after all; a few drops here or there matter enormously - but consequences often become more serious as income levels go down.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
I've realized that it's important to stop trying to think I'm any one thing. People are confused as to their identity and try to cling to one aspect of that identity to describe what they are: American, Republican, Muslim. These are really incomplete.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
I was 30 when 9/11 happened and I had lived exactly 15 years of life in America, so I was half American. I was a full-fledged New Yorker.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
I don't want to be a Michael Moore-style artist, which is not to disparage Michael Moore. But he seems rather unsuccessful at winning people over who don't already agree with him.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid
Pakistan now is like a horror film franchise. You know, it's 'Friday the 13th, Episode 63: The Terrorist from Pakistan.' And each time we hear of Pakistan it's in that context.
Quote by -Mohsin Hamid