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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Mohsin Hamid

My Life

Home

Strong

" My grandparents used to pray five times a day, but they were quiet about their own thing. Completely liberal day by day; my grandmother was a social worker and my grandfather was an engineer, but they never talked about religion. My entire life I couldn't remember one conversation I had with them about religion. "

" 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. "

" Novels are make-believe and play for adults. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly. "

" 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. "

" Oftentimes I deliberately put ambiguity into my books so that... the reader is left with an echo of: 'How much of this was from me?' "

Mohsin Hamid

Ambiguity

Much

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it. "

" Growing up in Pakistan in the 1980s, I lived in the shadow of a tyrannical state. "

Mohsin Hamid

Shadow

Lived

" How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means? "

" 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. "

" When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response. "

" 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. "

" It's not that, living in Pakistan, I feel an enormous constraint on how I can write and what I can say; rather, I recognize that one has to navigate these things... Am I aware of things that one could say that would be risky or that could be dangerous? Certainly I'm aware of those things. "

" Novel writing is solitary work. "

" I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity. "

" We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains. "

" Love places someone else in the centre of your being and your own self is blurred. "

" I'm pro-human. And I think recognizing the human nature of migration is very important. "

" I think we need to radically reimagine the future - citizens, artist, writers, politicians, everyone. "

" If you sit back and simply allow your country to be, it is highly unlikely to be the kind of country you want. You have to be active. "

" Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I like the idea of an open, international London that thrives on attracting hard-working, talented people but has the confidence to tell them they must play by the same rules as everyone else. "

" Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics. "