Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mohsin Hamid
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: July 23
Novelist
Writer
Ones
Occupy
Common
Critique
Nature
Establish
Form
Appeal
Best
Appeals
Think
Effective
Thinking
Forms
People
Ground

More quotes by Mohsin Hamid

Image
Our countries are weaker: they cannot protect us from imported goods, they can't protect us from climate change, they cannot protect us from epidemics. These things cross borders. But the kind of cooperation that would protect us from those things was completely lacking and because of this there's been a backlash. People feel vulnerable.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
If your book is set in the plantation days of the slave-owning South and you write a little romance between two slave owners without acknowledging the system they live, that's a political gesture.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
I felt suddenly very young - or perhaps I felt my age.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
I'm not sure if guys are supposed to read Vanity Fair. I feel very metrosexual with it but am not sure it's in my comfort zone.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way through
Mohsin Hamid
Image
Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
So in many ways, the bombing at the end of this year and the terrorist attack of last year in Peshawar have bookended both those years in a very unfortunate way. But at a bigger picture since, the impression in Pakistan is that things are actually improving on the terrorism front quite dramatically.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
All human stories are migration stories because everyone is a refugee from their own childhood.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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
Image
All over the world, the nativist perspective is being privileged over those who are more recent arrivals.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
The fruits of labor are delicious, but individually they’re not particularly fattening. So don’t share yours, and munch on those of others whenever you can.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
I think wars, climate change, all that stuff is going to move people. And so I wanted to say, What if the migration apocalypse occurs and it isn't an apocalypse at all? Maybe we will still find ways to be happy and for our children and grandchildren to thrive and the world to move on.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
Being a writer is not the point. Writing is.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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
Image
America's strength has made it a sort of Gulliver in world affairs: By wiggling its toes it can, often inadvertently, break the arm of a Lilliputian.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
We think of the romance novel as a lesser form of literature, but I don't think that's true. Love is a very important aspect of human life and worth exploring.
Mohsin Hamid