Mohsin Hamid

Novel writing is solitary work.

— Mohsin Hamid

“He was a man who discovered love through his penis.”

— Mohsin Hamid

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

— Mohsin Hamid

What else is belief but direction?

— Mohsin Hamid

When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response.

— Mohsin Hamid

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

— Mohsin Hamid

“Glaring is something we men of Lahore take seriously...”

— Mohsin Hamid

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

— Mohsin Hamid

All human stories are migration stories because everyone is a refugee from their own childhood.

— Mohsin Hamid

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

— Mohsin Hamid

We should be very skeptical of people who want to place limits on how we express ourselves.

— Mohsin Hamid

“...depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself”

— Mohsin Hamid

If we try to 'protect ourselves', our nation-states begin to look like prisons.

— Mohsin Hamid

“I know I'm standing still, but I feel like I've stumbled and I'm starting to fall.”

— Mohsin Hamid

“[O]ver sufficiently long a term, as everyone knows, there is nothing that does not have as its consequence death.”

— Mohsin Hamid

“They try to resist change. Power comes from becoming change.”

— Mohsin Hamid

My earliest memories are of watching 'Star Trek' and 'MASH' while my parents barbecued chicken in the back yard. I was an…

— Mohsin Hamid

I actually feel that personal matters, like religion and spirituality, are things that I really discuss only with intimates. I think it's,…

— Mohsin Hamid

Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted…

— Mohsin Hamid

We're all united in this, that every human being migrates through time, that the place we grew up in in our childhood…

— Mohsin Hamid

Television has given Pakistan a truly open national forum for the first time in its history. Ideas are debated, leaders are assessed…

— 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…

— Mohsin Hamid

In Italian, the word for novel is romanzo, "the romance." The English is "novel" - something new. Both of those elements, experimentation…

— Mohsin Hamid

I think sometimes feeling that you've been marginalized opens you up to the realization that, in their own lives, almost everyone experiences…

— Mohsin Hamid

“All their doors remained simple doors, on/off switches in the flow between two adjacent places, binarily either open or closed, but each…

— 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…

— Mohsin Hamid

“we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too…

— Mohsin Hamid

We can open up our computers and Skype with someone, and we see them. It's like looking through a window. And we…

— Mohsin Hamid

“Many parents were strict, and sometimes weeks would pass without us being able to meet those we thought of as our girlfriends.…

— Mohsin Hamid

So much of our conversation about love is possessive. "You are mine. And if you stop being mine, I will hate you."…

— Mohsin Hamid

“Every time a couple moves they begin, if their attention is still drawn to one another, to see each other differently, for…

— 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…

— Mohsin Hamid

And I ask myself what it is about me that makes this wonderful, beautiful woman return. Is it because I'm pathetic, helpless…

— Mohsin Hamid

“But you can always justify killing animals on the grounds that you want to eat them, or wear them, or that they…

— Mohsin Hamid

“There are two social classes in Pakistan," Professor Superb said to his unsuspecting audience, gripping the podium with both hands as he…

— Mohsin Hamid

“The effect doors had on people altered as well. Rumors had begun to circulate of doors that could take you elsewhere, often…

— Mohsin Hamid

“For we were not always burdened by debt, dependent on foreign aid and handouts; in the stories we tell of ourselves we…

— Mohsin Hamid

“The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame [...] The moth takes off again, and we…

— Mohsin Hamid

“My father liked to wonder aloud whether the phoenix was re-created by the fire of its funeral pyre or transformed so that…

— Mohsin Hamid

“Now, though, in Marin, Saeed prayed even more, several times a day, and he prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for…

— Mohsin Hamid