Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way through Mohsin Hamid More Quotes by Mohsin Hamid More Quotes From Mohsin Hamid If we try to 'protect ourselves', our nation-states begin to look like prisons. Mohsin Hamid prison trying looks 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. Mohsin Hamid addresses poverty charity When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response. Mohsin Hamid terrorism strikes natural When people talk about the death of the novel, they are speaking of the need for the birth of something different. Mohsin Hamid different people needs Our countries are weaker: they cannot protect us from imported goods, they can't protect us from climate change, they cannot protect us from epidemics. These things cross borders. But the kind of cooperation that would protect us from those things was completely lacking and because of this there's been a backlash. People feel vulnerable. Mohsin Hamid epidemics country people Many boys, probably most boys, have a first love before they fall in love with a woman. It begins the moment two boys realize they'd die for one another, that each cares more for the other than he does for himself, and it lasts usually until a second love comes on the scene, because most hearts aren't big enough to love more than one person like that. Mohsin Hamid first-love falling-in-love heart 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. Mohsin Hamid land cities opportunity The gun of the father is always the undoing of the son. Mohsin Hamid gun father son But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. Mohsin Hamid dark character book Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians. Mohsin Hamid cities rivers years 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 . . . Mohsin Hamid different reading book I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond — only younger, darker, and possibly better paid. Mohsin Hamid paid my-own eye It is the effect of scarcity; one’s rules of propriety make one thirst for the improper. Mohsin Hamid propriety thirst scarcity I think the idea of migration through time is very important because every human being does that and it unites us with people who migrate through geography. Mohsin Hamid people ideas thinking Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan, ancient capital of the Punjab, home to nearly as many people as New York, layered like a sedimentary plain with the accreted history of invaders from the Aryans to the Mongols to the British. Mohsin Hamid cities new-york home For if there were a list of cosmic things that unite us, reader and writer, visible as it scrolled up into the distance, like the introduction to some epic science-fiction film, then shining brightly on that list would be the fact that we exist in a financial universe that is subject to massive gravitational pulls from states. States tug at us. States bend us. And, tirelessly, states seek to determine our orbits. Mohsin Hamid distance shining epic Novel writing is solitary work. Mohsin Hamid solitary novel writing I think fiction allows you to inhabit new domains and it's you, the reader living in that domain for a few days that results in a deeper understanding as opposed to the novel proclaiming this is what it is right and this is what is wrong. Mohsin Hamid understanding fiction thinking Novels are make-believe and play for adults. Mohsin Hamid adults play believe Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly. Mohsin Hamid human-beings novel humans
