Mohsin Hamid Quotes

We're all united in this, that every human being migrates through time, that the place we grew up in in our childhood is gone when we're in our 50s and 60s and 70s.

For many people, there is an almost power to be found in prayer.

I really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and those characters live their lives.

It is the effect of scarcity; one’s rules of propriety make one thirst for the improper.

One ought not to encourage beggars, and yes, you are right, it is far better to donate to charities that address the causes of poverty rather than to him, a creature who is merely its symptom.

The fruits of labor are delicious, but individually they’re not particularly fattening. So don’t share yours, and munch on those of others whenever you can.

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.

Novels are make-believe and play for adults.

Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly.

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.

Farmers and people who make a living from the land are finding it impossible to survive. So the first step is to get out of that place. Come to the city where there are opportunities.

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.

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.

I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.

I think that people are going to move. They always have and that's going to continue. The question is, how are we going to deal with it?

A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think.

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.

Being a writer is not the point. Writing is.

For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance.

Growing up in Pakistan in the 1980s, I lived in the shadow of a tyrannical state.

How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means?

I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.

I don't know if I'm truly at home in any language.

Walking is a meditative act. It's so rare that we allow ourselves just to be.

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words.

You're a watchful guy. you know where that comes from?" I shook my head. "It comes from feeling out of place," he said. "Believe me. I know.

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.

I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it.

The mobile phone is very dangerous. If you're walking and looking at your phone, you're not walking - you're surfing the internet.

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.

You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.

I felt suddenly very young - or perhaps I felt my age.

I responded to the gravity of an invisible moon at my core, and I undertook journeys I had not expected to take.

Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way through

The monolithic view that many Americans have of Pakistani culture is as inaccurate as the monolithic view that many Pakistanis have of American culture.

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?'

Novel writing is the slowest art form in the world. It is not a sprint. It is not even a marathon. It is a series of marathons that stretch over and over across a continent.

When people talk about the death of the novel, they are speaking of the need for the birth of something different.

I'd rather create a miniature painting than a Taj Mahal of a book.

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.

I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond — only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.

The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.

Pakistan hasn't been cast in the role of... interesting cultural place or, you know, land of great comedians.

We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.

The ban on the burkini, which is basically a wetsuit, seems particularly ridiculous.

Novel writing is solitary work.

Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves.

The gun of the father is always the undoing of the son.

Religion is not something I like to talk about publicly. One reason is the politics, but also I think spirituality is deeply personal.