Mohsin Hamid Quotes & Sayings

“Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.”

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

“There is a huge sense of loneliness as people leave villages and move to cities. It's hard to find that human connection as you move away from where you started.”

“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.”

“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.”

“When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.”

“When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?'”