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" I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words. "
Mohsin Hamid
Words
Silence
Need
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" It's very easy, if you come from a place like Pakistan, to imagine that there's a narrative of American aggression towards the place that you come from. But that, in itself, is just a political view. "
Mohsin Hamid
Political
American
Place
" Given enough time, polar bears might migrate off the Arctic ice, evolve darker coats, find a different diet, and thrive in a new, warmer climate. But if the ice on which they depend disappears in a few decades, they are likely to die. "
Mohsin Hamid
Time
Enough
Die
" A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think. "
Mohsin Hamid
Themselves
I Think
Encounter
" I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking place in cinema, they have had to deal with that by digging deeper into who these people are. "
Mohsin Hamid
Courage
Think
Place
" The simple fact of being a human being is you migrate. Many of us move from one place to the other. But even those who don't move, and you stay in the same city, if you were born in Manhattan 70 years ago, you're born in Des Moines 70 years ago, you've lived in the same place for 70 years, the city you live in today is unrecognizable. "
Mohsin Hamid
Simple
City
Live
" Basically, asking me what kind of music I like is like asking what kind of food I like: 'Anything that tastes good,' is the answer. I'm the kind of guy who spends three times as much on his speakers as he does on his television. "
Mohsin Hamid
Good
Three
Me
" For a combination of reasons, and despite evident fondness for American products and individuals, my impression is that most Pakistanis have extremely negative views of the U.S. as a geopolitical player. "
Mohsin Hamid
Impression
Negative
Products
" 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
Serious
Powerful
Soup
" Novels are make-believe and play for adults. "
Mohsin Hamid
Make-Believe
Novels
Play
" Pakistan hasn't been cast in the role of... interesting cultural place or, you know, land of great comedians. "
Mohsin Hamid
Interesting
Great
Know
" I don't know if I'm truly at home in any language. "
Mohsin Hamid
Know
Truly
Language
" 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
Over
Writing
Art
" Being outside the candy store looking in is the state of people today. Whether you're in a Pakistani village watching somebody in a car drive by, or you're in the city of Lahore going to a restaurant and seeing somebody with a security entourage coming in... you're exposed to people with more. "
Mohsin Hamid
People
Car
City
" It is not surprising that most Pakistanis do not support America's bombardment of Afghanistan. The Afghans are neighbours on the brink of starvation and devastated by war. America has shown itself to be untrustworthy, a superpower that uses its values as a scabbard for its sword. "
Mohsin Hamid
Values
Support
Sword
" Most Muslims do not 'choose' Islam in the way that they choose to become doctors or lawyers, nor even in the way that they choose to become fans of Coldplay or Radiohead. Most Muslims, like people of any faith, are born into their religion. "
Mohsin Hamid
Faith
Born
Lawyers
" Nothing good gets written without the writer suffering along the way, in my opinion. Writing should be a pleasure, but unless you feel almost broken many, many times in the journey to a novel, you haven't pushed yourself hard enough. "
Mohsin Hamid
Good
Writing
Broken
" If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants. "
Mohsin Hamid
Years
Self
You
" Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself. "
Mohsin Hamid
Yourself
Empathy
Finding
" I don't want to be a Michael Moore-style artist, which is not to disparage Michael Moore. But he seems rather unsuccessful at winning people over who don't already agree with him. "
Mohsin Hamid
Over
Want
Winning
" How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means? "
Mohsin Hamid
Means
Big
How
" Television has given Pakistan a truly open national forum for the first time in its history. Ideas are debated, leaders are assessed and criticised, and a nation of 170 million people is finally discovering, together, what it thinks. "
Mohsin Hamid
People
Time
Together
" Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly. "
Mohsin Hamid
Human Being
Only
Human
" 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
Ground
People
Best
" As a writer, I am constantly aware that I take my life in my hands with everything I do and say. It's just a fact of life. For me it always has been. "
Mohsin Hamid
I Am
My Life
Hands
" When the forces are aligning against hybridity, it harms everyone, as we are all migrants. Growing up in Pakistan, I know just how oppressive that kind of puritanical mindset can be. "
Mohsin Hamid
Kind
Mindset
Growing Up
" Love places someone else in the centre of your being and your own self is blurred. "
Mohsin Hamid
Your
Someone
Self
" I try to write short novels and leave details out not because I want to be minimalist, but because I think that it enables the readers' creativity and interaction with the book. "
Mohsin Hamid
Book
Creativity
Think
" When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist. "
Mohsin Hamid
Like
Feel
Travel
" I think that there is a degree of petulance around President Trump and also a degree of sort of blundering incompetence, which is unlike most businesspeople. "
Mohsin Hamid
Incompetence
President
Degree
" Outside of America, there are many people, myself included, who champion values that in some senses could be thought of as traditionally American: The idea that everybody is equal; the idea that the rights of women and men should be the same. "
Mohsin Hamid
People
Women
Myself