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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
Two
Stronger
Love
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" There's a real, brutal nature to the capitalism practiced by the main character in 'How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.' And I think playing dirty is certainly part of that. "
Mohsin Hamid
Rich
Character
Think
" 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. "
Mohsin Hamid
People
Never
Ocean
" 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 was 30 when 9/11 happened and I had lived exactly 15 years of life in America, so I was half American. I was a full-fledged New Yorker. "
Mohsin Hamid
Lived
Life
New
" 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
" There are many cultural scenes in Lahore, just as there are in London. And there is a celebrity culture here, just as there is in London. But in Lahore, the celebrity scene doesn't drown out the rest quite so much. "
Mohsin Hamid
Culture
Rest
London
" Novels are make-believe and play for adults. "
Mohsin Hamid
Make-Believe
Novels
Play
" Being a writer is not the point. Writing is. "
Mohsin Hamid
Point
Writer
Writing
" 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
Country
Birth
" I am sometimes asked to name my favourite books. The list changes, depending on my mood, the year, tricks played by memory. I might mention novels by Nabokov and Calvino and Tolkien on one occasion, by Fitzgerald and Baldwin and E.B. White on another. Camus often features, as do Tolstoy, Borges, Morrison and Manto. "
Mohsin Hamid
Changes
Memory
I Am
" 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. "
Mohsin Hamid
Confidence
Play
People
" 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
" It's very contrary to the notion of what America is to imagine that we can stop migration. "
Mohsin Hamid
Migration
Very
Imagine
" 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. "
Mohsin Hamid
Life
Religion
Day
" I've realized that it's important to stop trying to think I'm any one thing. People are confused as to their identity and try to cling to one aspect of that identity to describe what they are: American, Republican, Muslim. These are really incomplete. "
Mohsin Hamid
Think
Stop
People
" 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
" Islamophobia, in all its guises, seeks to minimise the importance of the individual and maximise the importance of the group. Yet our instinctive stance ought to be one of suspicion towards such endeavours. For individuals are undeniably real. Groups, on the other hand, are assertions of opinion. "
Mohsin Hamid
Real
Individual
Group
" 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
" 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
Writing
Like
" Migration isn't a one-directional process; it's a colossal process that has been happening in all directions for thousands of years. "
Mohsin Hamid
Process
Years
Been
" A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think. "
Mohsin Hamid
Themselves
I Think
Encounter
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
Me
" The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism. "
Mohsin Hamid
Actor
Pakistan
Terrorism
" 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
" 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
" 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
Lord
Web
" 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