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" 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. "

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" 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'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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" In a sense, by closing off the idea that young Muslims, and particularly young Muslim men, can be American heroes, it increases the chance that they'll try to be some other kind of hero. And that, I think, is entirely counterproductive. "

" The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism. "

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

" I think that when we take the long view, the notion that some people are deemed less worthy of being able to move - to not have the right to cross borders - over time, that's going to seem as outmoded and as unfair, really, as racial discrimination or other kinds of discrimination. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 'Which is stronger, politics or love?' is like asking, 'Which is stronger, exhaling or inhaling?' They are two sides of the same thing. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia. "

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

" Like many kids, I used to pretend all sorts of things. I would climb into a tree and imagine that I was on an island, that the grass below we was an ocean, that the leaves were the fins of sharks. Perhaps unlike many people, I never really stopped. I still have a childlike predisposition to fantasise and share my fantasies. "

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

" I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words. "

" For people who are at the bottom economically, the world is becoming a harder and harder place. And yet the incentives to become rich are so great because enormous amounts of wealth are being accumulated. And so those two things, that carrot and stick, are beating people along this trajectory of trying desperately to move up in the world. "

" Literature helps us transcend ourselves. "

Mohsin Hamid

Transcend

Literature

" When I'm writing well, I feel happy. And when I go too long without writing, I begin to implode. "

Mohsin Hamid

Without

Happy

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "