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" I'm not a representative of Pakistan; I'm just an example that Pakistanis are different from each other. I believe it in my fiction and I believe it personally. "
Mohsin Hamid
Example
Different
Believe
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" Being a writer is not the point. Writing is. "
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Writer
Writing
" 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
" A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think. "
Mohsin Hamid
Themselves
I Think
Encounter
" I'm pro-human. And I think recognizing the human nature of migration is very important. "
Mohsin Hamid
Important
Human Nature
Think
" 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
" Pakistan now is like a horror film franchise. You know, it's 'Friday the 13th, Episode 63: The Terrorist from Pakistan.' And each time we hear of Pakistan it's in that context. "
Mohsin Hamid
Now
Know
Horror
" 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. "
Mohsin Hamid
You
Back
Active
" 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
" 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 am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience. "
Mohsin Hamid
Am
Experience
I Am
" Violent cities, people who live in violent cities, find a way - as New Yorkers did 30 or 40 years ago - they find a way to just carry on. But you're stressed out. You're worried, you know. "
Mohsin Hamid
People
You
Know
" I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity. "
Mohsin Hamid
Aesthetic
Years
Small
" I'm not sure if guys are supposed to read Vanity Fair. I feel very metrosexual with it but am not sure it's in my comfort zone. "
Mohsin Hamid
Comfort
Feel
Comfort Zone
" 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
Law
Rules
Society
" I am a fairly mongrelized person - you know I've been a migrant my whole life, and it's hard to think of myself as any pure one thing. And so I take it, I guess, very personally - this notion that migrants are bad and that mixing is bad and that people from other places are bad. "
Mohsin Hamid
Know
I Am
Life
" It's very contrary to the notion of what America is to imagine that we can stop migration. "
Mohsin Hamid
Migration
Very
Imagine
" I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing. "
Mohsin Hamid
Religion
Art
Writing
" I don't know if I'm truly at home in any language. "
Mohsin Hamid
Know
Truly
Language
" Those of us who thought Jorge Luis Borges was a pioneer of magical realism were mistaken; he was a pioneer of science fiction. "
Mohsin Hamid
Science
Pioneer
Us
" Part of the reason people abroad resent the United States is something Americans can do very little about: envy. The richest, most powerful country in the world attracts the jealousy of others in much the same way that the richest, most powerful man in a small town attracts the jealousy of others. "
Mohsin Hamid
Small
Powerful
Jealousy
" Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly. "
Mohsin Hamid
Human Being
Only
Human
" 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
" 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 the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image. "
Mohsin Hamid
Image
Human Being
Human
" I don't want to be a propagandist or say that Pakistan is just great. There are problems, but it is a much more complex place than we are given to believe. "
Mohsin Hamid
Believe
Say
Problems
" Over time, our inescapable, systemic, fundamentally human impurity gives us the capacity to do what has not been done before: to make creative leaps in our biology, in the diseases we can resist and the foods we can digest. And in our thinking and culture and politics, too. "
Mohsin Hamid
Done
Time
Thinking
" 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
" When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response. "
Mohsin Hamid
Anger
Natural
Terrorism
" We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains. "
Mohsin Hamid
Individual
Brains
Power
" 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