Mohsin Hamid
The fruits of labor are delicious, but individually they’re not particularly fattening. So don’t share yours, and munch on those of others whenever you can.Collection: Fruit
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 US as a geopolitical player.Collection: Player
In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still.Collection: Love
Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way throughCollection: Book
One ought not to encourage beggars, and yes, you are right, it is far better to donate to charities that address the causes of poverty rather than to him, a creature who is merely its symptom.Collection: Charity
The mountain trembled like an earthquake. Dust flew into the sky. And the rock turned dark red, like the color of blood'. 'How would you know?' Asks Sindhi cap. 'You only have a black and white television'. 'But it's a very good one. You can almost see colours.Collection: Dark
If an American teenager were to come to Lahore, they'd have wildly different experiences depending on whom they met. They could party and get drunk and smoke hashish with some, while others would say, "Let's get some religious instruction."Collection: Religious
So in many ways, the bombing at the end of this year and the terrorist attack of last year in Peshawar have bookended both those years in a very unfortunate way. But at a bigger picture since, the impression in Pakistan is that things are actually improving on the terrorism front quite dramatically.Collection: Years
In America there are people advocating for trans rights and people like Vice President Pence, who is vehemently opposed. In Pakistan, too, you have all kinds of folks - from flamboyant gay fashion designers and female Air Force pilots to the Taliban. A cross-dressed man used to be the top TV talk show host. It was actually quite radical. So the diversity of these societies is often lost on people.Collection: Fashion
I think that things were getting really very bad a couple of years ago, and there's been a very significant change in response to that on the part of the security forces and the government, but particularly the army. And you see Pakistan actually fighting terrorism and terrorists in a much more wholehearted way than had been occurring previously. It's not anywhere close to over yet, but you've seen a big change in the antiterrorism campaign here.Collection: Couple
The monolithic view that many Americans have of Pakistani culture is as inaccurate as the monolithic view that many Pakistanis have of American culture.Collection: Views
think that the external situation has also changed somewhat. The reduction of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has, in a sense, reduced how inflamed the situation on the Pakistani border regions was and is.Collection: Thinking
And also I think the rise of other, you could say, destinations for international jihadis mean that Pakistan isn't necessarily the place where people from all over the world who want to engage in these activities gravitate to. They're going now to places like Syria or Yemen Libya, elsewhere.Collection: Mean
In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.Collection: Fall
In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many other Pakistani writers, they encounter ideas, notions, ways of thinking about the world, thinking about their society that are different. And fiction functions in a countercultural way as it does in America and certainly as it did in the, you know, '60s.Collection: Thinking
You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.Collection: Mean
I felt suddenly very young - or perhaps I felt my age.Collection: Age
You're a watchful guy. you know where that comes from?" I shook my head. "It comes from feeling out of place," he said. "Believe me. I know.Collection: Believe
And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she's there, chemical wonder in her eyes.Collection: Eye
I think wars, climate change, all that stuff is going to move people. And so I wanted to say, "What if the migration apocalypse occurs and it isn't an apocalypse at all?" Maybe we will still find ways to be happy and for our children and grandchildren to thrive and the world to move on.Collection: Children
It is the effect of scarcity; one’s rules of propriety make one thirst for the improper.Collection: Scarcity
The paralysis that we have right now when we think about migration is partly because we can't imagine what the world would look like in the future. So I think it's important for writers and artists to try to imagine that.Collection: Thinking
Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians.Collection: Years
If the dominant political expression that we're seeing right now is of nostalgia and we know that nostalgia won't really work out, what happens is, we become depressed as individuals and societies - when we're depressed, we're much more vulnerable to be taken advantage of by demagogues and xenophobes.Collection: Taken
There really still is a deep wound, you know, in the collective psyche of Pakistan. And the violence has left enormous human and emotional and psychic damage. That's not going to go away. But that said, I think I'm cautiously optimistic that we're looking at a better future.Collection: Optimistic
We need to start imagining the future or it will get imagined for us, and the ways that it has been imagined thus far don't seem very attractive.Collection: Imagining The Future
I think that people are going to move. They always have and that's going to continue. The question is, how are we going to deal with it?Collection: Moving
If my daughter wanted to wear a headscarf and dress in a religiously conservative way, I would be heartbroken. But if she were to decide to do that and she were to live in a place where people said she couldn't do that, I would be entirely committed to her right to do so.Collection: Heartbroken
For many people, there is an almost power to be found in prayer.Collection: Prayer
I really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and those characters live their lives.Collection: Powerful
The ethnocultural connotations of the burkini ban are very strong. It's as absurd as mandating that women have to go topless on the beach. If I were a woman, I definitely would not want to wear a burkini or a headscarf. But it's not about what I want.Collection: Beach
Writing a novel is like an amusement park or a museum or a city. You go into that place and you have certain experiences and those experiences, hopefully, have some impact on you.Collection: Writing
I would have bet money that Britain would not vote to leave the EU, and I would have been wrong. I would have bet money that Trump would not have been the Republican nominee, and I would have been wrong and I certainly would have bet money that he wouldn't win the election.Collection: Winning
I think the idea of migration through time is very important because every human being does that and it unites us with people who migrate through geography.Collection: Thinking
When I'm really plugged in I find it difficult to write. It's like digging a well. If you make a void, something moves in to fill it. Writing books is like that. It's mostly about freeing up time, doing nothing, and in that time some writing starts to happen. We need to figure out how to maintain those voids.Collection: Moving
My aunt used to say, "It's between me and my god; it's got nothing to do with you." It was a good enough answer for me as a snot-nosed college kid angling for a religious debate, and I still think it's a good way of putting it.Collection: Religious
I think there’s really strong social stratification in South Asia.Collection: Strong