I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity. — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I think we need to radically reimagine the future - citizens, artist, writers, politicians, everyone. — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
When I'm writing well, I feel happy. And when I go too long without writing, I begin to implode. — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words. — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I think walking is very useful, like sleeping and dreaming, as something that's important to my ability to write. — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience. — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
As a writer, I am constantly aware that I take my life in my hands with everything I do and say. It's… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
Writing a novel is like an amusement park or a museum or a city. You go into that place and you have… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
If your book is set in the plantation days of the slave-owning South and you write a little romance between two slave… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
Walking is very good for writers. There's something fundamentally useful about not talking to anybody, not looking at a screen, and being… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I don't think the function of writing, at least for me as a fiction writer, is to say to people, "Here's the… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
For me, writing a novel is more like digging a well than climbing a mountain - some heroic thing where I set… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
“It is odd, isn’t it? Whenever I read something interesting, I tear out a piece and keep it as a talisman until… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I feel engaged with young people in Pakistan. But that said, it's still a small minority that reads novels, literary fiction. But… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
When I'm really plugged in I find it difficult to write. It's like digging a well. If you make a void, something… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
You know, you get a bad review as a writer, you remember it for 10 years. You get a hundred good reviews,… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained,… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
“But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city,… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I think writing is a very political act. I think that any writer who says it's not, is simply a writer who… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
Novel writing is the slowest art form in the world. It is not a sprint. It is not even a marathon. It… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
Nothing good gets written without the writer suffering along the way, in my opinion. Writing should be a pleasure, but unless you… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
The paralysis that we have right now when we think about migration is partly because we can't imagine what the world would… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
“I'm interested in things women do that aren't spoken about. Manto's stories let me breathe. They make me feel like less of… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
I don't want to be anxious on my day-to-day life. I want to try to imagine a future I'd like to live… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
Certainly, historically, there has been more attention given in the international media to Indian English-language writers than to Pakistani English-language writers. But… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
For if there were a list of cosmic things that unite us, reader and writer, visible as it scrolled up into the… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share Image
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… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
A beard is something that is almost like a mirror to the viewer. When someone sees you wearing a beard, they're seeing something in… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
And also I think the rise of other, you could say, destinations for international jihadis mean that Pakistan isn't necessarily the place where people… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
“I met her eyes, and for the first time I perceived that there was something broken behind them, like a tiny crack in a… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
“muscularity, made more pronounced by her gauntness, and the near-inanimate” — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
“It seemed to me then - and to be honest, sir, seems to me still - that America was engaged only in posturing. As… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain. — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image. — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
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… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
“Often, during my stay in your country, such comparisons troubled me. In fact, they did more than trouble me: they made me resentful. Four… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
I'm not a representative of Pakistan; I'm just an example that Pakistanis are different from each other. I believe it in my fiction and… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
“end of a couple is like a death, and the notion of death, of temporariness, can remind us of the value of things,” — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
NYC doesn't have a big sign saying "You must love diversity and the rights of all people." And that's not what makes you love… — Mohsin Hamid Copy Share
