Mohsin Hamid Quotes

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Mohsin Hamid

Profession : Writer

Birth : July 23, 1971

I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking place in cinema, they have had to deal with that by digging deeper into who these people are.

Mohsin Hamid

Capitalism is like the law of the jungle with a few rules. There isn't another system that works for our society but left unchecked, capitalism can have a dehumanising effect.

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.

Mohsin Hamid

Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.

Mohsin Hamid

When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.

Mohsin Hamid

Migration isn't a one-directional process; it's a colossal process that has been happening in all directions for thousands of years.

Mohsin Hamid

Maybe we are all prospective migrants. The lines of national borders on maps are artificial constructs, as unnatural to us as they are to birds flying overhead. Our first impulse is to ignore them.

Mohsin Hamid

I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get 'you.'

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.

Mohsin Hamid

When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response.

Mohsin Hamid

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

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.

Mohsin Hamid

Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values.

Mohsin Hamid

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

Mohsin Hamid

Basically, asking me what kind of music I like is like asking what kind of food I like: 'Anything that tastes good,' is the answer. I'm the kind of guy who spends three times as much on his speakers as he does on his television.

Mohsin Hamid

The four places I've called home in my life have been Lahore, London, New York and California. And I have a very strong tie to each one of those four places.

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.

Mohsin Hamid

I personally tend to believe that there is a right to migration, the same way there's a right to love whom you like and to believe what you believe and to say what you want to say.

Mohsin Hamid

Given enough time, polar bears might migrate off the Arctic ice, evolve darker coats, find a different diet, and thrive in a new, warmer climate. But if the ice on which they depend disappears in a few decades, they are likely to die.

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.

Mohsin Hamid