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I believe one can gauge a book's impact only after about 10 years.

Mohsin Hamid

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Mohsin Hamid
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: July 23
Novelist
Writer
Gauge
Gauges
Impact
Book
Believe
Years

More quotes by Mohsin Hamid

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I think the most effective forms of critique are ones that establish a common ground for people to occupy, and then appeal to the best nature of people on that common ground.
Mohsin Hamid
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The monolithic view that many Americans have of Pakistani culture is as inaccurate as the monolithic view that many Pakistanis have of American culture.
Mohsin Hamid
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The ban on the burkini, which is basically a wetsuit, seems particularly ridiculous.
Mohsin Hamid
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My dad had this outlook: It doesn't matter what I want to read - reading was a good thing. So whatever I was curious about they'd get for me from the library. Books were a kind of a resistance to reality. I liked to imagine worlds that were different. I still do.
Mohsin Hamid
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We keep the negative stuff because it's the negative stuff that's going to, you know, potentially kill us. That fin in the water - maybe it is a shark. That yellow thing behind the tree - maybe it is a lion. You need to be scared.
Mohsin Hamid
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It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.
Mohsin Hamid
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Islamophobia, in all its guises, seeks to minimise the importance of the individual and maximise the importance of the group. Yet our instinctive stance ought to be one of suspicion towards such endeavours. For individuals are undeniably real. Groups, on the other hand, are assertions of opinion.
Mohsin Hamid
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If we try to 'protect ourselves', our nation-states begin to look like prisons.
Mohsin Hamid
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My mother has been to Mecca to perform her hajj my dad hasn't. I come from a very liberal family, so even the people who are outwardly religious tend to subscribe to gender equality, the importance of open-mindedness, all that stuff. My family is generally nonprescriptive.
Mohsin Hamid
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Novels function and the power of novels function because of their stories.
Mohsin Hamid
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I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.
Mohsin Hamid
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The ethnocultural connotations of the burkini ban are very strong. It's as absurd as mandating that women have to go topless on the beach. If I were a woman, I definitely would not want to wear a burkini or a headscarf. But it's not about what I want.
Mohsin Hamid
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When we aren't collectively imagining hopeful futures, then the way things are going almost invariably seems negative and frightening.
Mohsin Hamid
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The mobile phone is very dangerous. If you're walking and looking at your phone, you're not walking - you're surfing the internet.
Mohsin Hamid
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When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.
Mohsin Hamid
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I think massive migration is inevitable. As sea levels rise, as climate change happens, as fertile fields become arid, as wars are fought, people are going to move. They always have.
Mohsin Hamid
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And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she's there, chemical wonder in her eyes.
Mohsin Hamid
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I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.
Mohsin Hamid
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It's important to have a non-nostalgic view and say, let's look forward, because if we don't, all we'll hear are voices telling us to go back.
Mohsin Hamid
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I think that people are going to move. They always have and that's going to continue. The question is, how are we going to deal with it?
Mohsin Hamid