Mohsin Hamid

“In times of violence, there is always that first acquaintance or intimate of ours, who, when they are touched, makes what had…

— Mohsin Hamid

“I tried not to dwell on the comparison; it was one thing to accept that New York was more wealthy than Lahore,…

— Mohsin Hamid

If an American teenager were to come to Lahore, they'd have wildly different experiences depending on whom they met. They could party…

— Mohsin Hamid

“Hoarse voice, from intimacy’s border with asthma: parched beaches, dust whipped by the wind. Very sexy but not much to drink.”

— Mohsin Hamid

There are many cultural scenes in Lahore, just as there are in London. And there is a celebrity culture here, just as…

— Mohsin Hamid

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

— Mohsin Hamid

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

— Mohsin Hamid

In a sense, by closing off the idea that young Muslims, and particularly young Muslim men, can be American heroes, it increases…

— Mohsin Hamid

If the dominant political expression that we're seeing right now is of nostalgia and we know that nostalgia won't really work out,…

— Mohsin Hamid

In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained,…

— Mohsin Hamid

“[…]when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen.…

— Mohsin Hamid

Outside of America, there are many people, myself included, who champion values that, in some senses, could be thought of as traditionally…

— Mohsin Hamid

Like many kids, I used to pretend all sorts of things. I would climb into a tree and imagine that I was…

— Mohsin Hamid

“They are pursued by a pair of hawk-faced men dressed in black and white: both forbidding, both hungry, but one tall and…

— Mohsin Hamid

“One's relationship to windows now changed in the city. A window was the border through which death was possibly most likely to…

— Mohsin Hamid

In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many…

— Mohsin Hamid

Given enough time, polar bears might migrate off the Arctic ice, evolve darker coats, find a different diet, and thrive in a…

— Mohsin Hamid

“What she was doing, what she had just done, was for her not about frivolity, it was about the essential, about being…

— Mohsin Hamid

“War would soon erode the facade of their building as though it had accelerated time itself, a day's toll outpacing that of…

— Mohsin Hamid

“To flee forever is beyond the capacity of most: at some point even a hunted animal will stop, exhausted, and awaits its…

— Mohsin Hamid

“There was also closeness, for the end of a couple is like a death, and the notion of death, of temporariness, can…

— Mohsin Hamid

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

It's very easy, if you come from a place like Pakistan, to imagine that there's a narrative of American aggression towards the…

— Mohsin Hamid

One ought not to encourage beggars, and yes, you are right, it is far better to donate to charities that address the…

— Mohsin Hamid

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

— Mohsin Hamid

Love is transient even on a very personal level. We lose everyone that we love. Sometimes we drift apart and sometimes we…

— Mohsin Hamid

If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self…

— Mohsin Hamid

“But I must admit that my motives were no entirely noble; there were in me at least some elements of the anger…

— Mohsin Hamid

Most Muslims do not 'choose' Islam in the way that they choose to become doctors or lawyers, nor even in the way…

— Mohsin Hamid

“if they had but waited and watched their relationship would have flowered again, and so their memories took on potential, which is…

— Mohsin Hamid

There's a real, brutal nature to the capitalism practiced by the main character in 'How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.'…

— Mohsin Hamid

I think there's a natural link between the fact that our self is a story that we make up and that we're…

— Mohsin Hamid

Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan, ancient capital of the Punjab, home to nearly as many people as New York, layered…

— Mohsin Hamid

If you sit back and simply allow your country to be, it is highly unlikely to be the kind of country you…

— Mohsin Hamid

Maybe we are all prospective migrants. The lines of national borders on maps are artificial constructs, as unnatural to us as they…

— Mohsin Hamid

I don't want to be a propagandist or say that Pakistan is just great. There are problems, but it is a much…

— Mohsin Hamid

Oftentimes I deliberately put ambiguity into my books so that... the reader is left with an echo of: 'How much of this…

— Mohsin Hamid

We recognise that, with time, every human being will cease being, will only have been. And so we seek to resist time.…

— Mohsin Hamid

India to someone who lives in Lahore is like Queens to someone who lives in Lower Manhattan - it's not far away,…

— Mohsin Hamid

“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