Quote

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.

Mohsin Hamid

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mohsin Hamid
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: July 23
Novelist
Writer
Novel
Amusement
Cities
Park
Place
Museums
Certain
Parks
Writing
Hopefully
Like
Experiences
Impact
City
Museum

More quotes by Mohsin Hamid

Image
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
Image
How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means?
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We're being subject to incredible amounts of surveillance, the police are taking on draconian powers and violating our rights. I think this attempt to protect ourselves is ultimately going to founder because people don't like living inside prisons.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
I think we should be prepared, given environmental and political change for large-scale migration. If sea levels rise and 200 million people in Bangladesh and 300 million people in Indonesia need to move, and the entire Chinese seaboard, New York City - that's going to be huge.
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
You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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
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
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
Image
When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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
Image
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
Image
What else is belief but direction?
Mohsin Hamid
Image
I felt suddenly very young - or perhaps I felt my age.
Mohsin Hamid
Image
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
Image
A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think.
Mohsin Hamid