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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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Mohsin Hamid
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: July 23
Novelist
Writer
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More quotes by 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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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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Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.
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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.
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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There's a reason prophets perform miracles language lacks the power to describe faith.
Mohsin Hamid
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Novels function and the power of novels function because of their stories.
Mohsin Hamid
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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
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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.
Mohsin Hamid
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Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians.
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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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
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Novel writing is the slowest art form in the world. It is not a sprint. It is not even a marathon. It is a series of marathons that stretch over and over across a continent.
Mohsin Hamid
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I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond — only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.
Mohsin Hamid
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My earliest memories are of watching Star Trek and MASH while my parents barbecued chicken in the back yard. I was an American kid, through and through.
Mohsin Hamid
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Religion is not something I like to talk about publicly. One reason is the politics, but also I think spirituality is deeply personal.
Mohsin Hamid
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I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.
Mohsin Hamid
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I felt suddenly very young - or perhaps I felt my age.
Mohsin Hamid
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For me, language is about the impossibility of communicating what we precisely wish to communicate and this gorgeous attempt that we make to do that anyway. I love that we will never say exactly what we mean, but we will forever keep trying.
Mohsin Hamid
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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.
Mohsin Hamid