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I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.

Mohsin Hamid

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Mohsin Hamid
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: July 23
Novelist
Writer
Writing
Aesthetic
Kind
Six
Years
Seven
Really
Small
Books
Write
Book
Take
Brevity

More quotes by Mohsin Hamid

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The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.
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Chance plays a powerful role in every life - our brains and personalities are just chemical soup, after all a few drops here or there matter enormously - but consequences often become more serious as income levels go down.
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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.
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Writing a novel is like an amusement park or a museum or a city. You go into that place and you have certain experiences and those experiences, hopefully, have some impact on you.
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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.
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When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.
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As a child I read all kinds of stuff, whether it was 'Asterix and Obelix' and 'Tin Tin' comic books, or 'Lord of the Rings,' or Frank Herbert's sci-fi. Or 'The Wind in the Willows.' Or 'Charlotte's Web.'
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I believe one can gauge a book's impact only after about 10 years.
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What used to help us to cope with transience was stuff like, extended families all living in one place, or very strong religious beliefs, or a tribe that would outlive you. That stuff is getting weaker.
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I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.
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Being a writer is not the point. Writing is.
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The ban on the burkini, which is basically a wetsuit, seems particularly ridiculous.
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Some of my relatives held on to imagined memories the way homeless people hold onto lottery tickets. Nostalgia was their crack cocaine, if you will, and my childhood was littered with the consequences of their addiction : unserviceable debts, squabbles over inheritances, the odd alcoholic or suicide.
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In Italian, the word for novel is romanzo, the romance. The English is novel - something new. Both of those elements, experimentation and love, are fundamental to the form.
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
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When I'm really plugged in I find it difficult to write. It's like digging a well. If you make a void, something moves in to fill it. Writing books is like that. It's mostly about freeing up time, doing nothing, and in that time some writing starts to happen. We need to figure out how to maintain those voids.
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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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We're all united in this, that every human being migrates through time, that the place we grew up in in our childhood is gone when we're in our 50s and 60s and 70s.
Mohsin Hamid
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You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.
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How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means?
Mohsin Hamid