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Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan, ancient capital of the Punjab, home to nearly as many people as New York, layered like a sedimentary plain with the accreted history of invaders from the Aryans to the Mongols to the British.

Mohsin Hamid

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Mohsin Hamid
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: July 23
Novelist
Writer
Second
Pakistan
Cities
Plain
Aryans
History
Capital
Punjab
Home
Nearly
Lahore
Many
British
Mongols
Like
Ancient
Layered
People
York
Invaders
City
Largest

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What else is belief but direction?
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I am not much of a researcher as a novelist I write mainly from experience.
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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.
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Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.
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The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.
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You're a watchful guy. you know where that comes from? I shook my head. It comes from feeling out of place, he said. Believe me. I know.
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I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond — only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.
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India to someone who lives in Lahore is like Queens to someone who lives in Lower Manhattan - it's not far away, and yet it doesn't exist.
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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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There really still is a deep wound, you know, in the collective psyche of Pakistan. And the violence has left enormous human and emotional and psychic damage. That's not going to go away. But that said, I think I'm cautiously optimistic that we're looking at a better future.
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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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Lived religion is a very different thing from strict textual analysis. Very few people of any faith live their lives as literalist interpretations of scripture.
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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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Walking is very good for writers. There's something fundamentally useful about not talking to anybody, not looking at a screen, and being in nature - even if that nature is an urban environment.
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The ban on the burkini, which is basically a wetsuit, seems particularly ridiculous.
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Capitalism is like the law of the jungle with a few rules. There isn't another system that works for our society but left unchecked, capitalism can have a dehumanising effect.
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Novels function and the power of novels function because of their stories.
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