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" I think there's a natural link between the fact that our self is a story that we make up and that we're drawn to stories. It resonates, in a way. "
Mohsin Hamid
Story
Fact
Natural
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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. "
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" Being a writer is not the point. Writing is. "
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" When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist. "
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" 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. "
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" I come from an enormous and very close family. I have over a dozen aunts and uncles in Pakistan, dozens of cousins. I have many close friends. I have received so much love in Lahore that the city always pulls me. "
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" Childbirth changed my perception of my wife. She was now the bloodied special forces soldier who had fought and risked everything for our family. "
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" Farmers and people who make a living from the land are finding it impossible to survive. So the first step is to get out of that place. Come to the city where there are opportunities. "
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" 'Which is stronger, politics or love?' is like asking, 'Which is stronger, exhaling or inhaling?' They are two sides of the same thing. "
Mohsin Hamid
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" Novel writing is solitary work. "
Mohsin Hamid
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" When I'm writing well, I feel happy. And when I go too long without writing, I begin to implode. "
Mohsin Hamid
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" Like many of my friends in the Pakistani diaspora - and many of my friends in Pakistan itself, for that matter - I have sometimes looked at the country of my birth and wondered whether its future will be one of steady and sad decline. "
Mohsin Hamid
Friends
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" 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
" We recognise that, with time, every human being will cease being, will only have been. And so we seek to resist time. We rebel against it. We are drawn like lovers to the unreachable past, to imagined memories, to nostalgia. "
Mohsin Hamid
Rebel
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" 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
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Hands
" I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience. "
Mohsin Hamid
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Experience
I Am
" A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think. "
Mohsin Hamid
Themselves
I Think
Encounter
" 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
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" Love places someone else in the centre of your being and your own self is blurred. "
Mohsin Hamid
Your
Someone
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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
Memories
Parents
Chicken
" The four places I've called home in my life have been Lahore, London, New York and California. And I have a very strong tie to each one of those four places. "
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Home
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" 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
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You
" For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance. "
Mohsin Hamid
Puzzle
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" 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. "
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" Certainly, historically, there has been more attention given in the international media to Indian English-language writers than to Pakistani English-language writers. But that, in my opinion, was justified by the sheer number of excellent writers coming from India and the Indian diaspora. "
Mohsin Hamid
India
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Media
" Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics. "
Mohsin Hamid
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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.' "
Mohsin Hamid
Wind
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" I often use nameless places in my work as a way of allowing the readers to create more of the novel and to make it potentially about their experiences, what they know, a city that they have perhaps seen on television. "
Mohsin Hamid
City
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Television
" 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
" I studied about the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War and about how the Constitution was written by men, many of whom were slave owners. So I suppose the travel ban strikes me as coming from an era I thought we'd left behind, but I guess we haven't entirely left it behind. "
Mohsin Hamid
Constitution
World
Men
" 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
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