Mohsin Hamid Quotes

Once as Nadia sat on the steps of a building reading the news on her phone across the street from a detachment of troops and a tank, she thought she saw online a photograph of herself sitting on the steps of a building reading the news on her phone across the street from a detachment of troops and a tank, and she was startled and wondered how this could be. How she could both read this news and be this news. And how the newspaper could have published this instantaneously, and she looked about for a photographer, and she had the bizarre feeling of time bending all around her, as though she were from the past reading about the future, or from the future reading about the past.
Mohsin Hamid
Pride tells me to give it back, but common sense tells pride to shut up, have a joint and relax. I shrug and put the note into my wallet.
Mohsin Hamid
For if there were a list of cosmic things that unite us, reader and writer, visible as it scrolled up into the distance, like the introduction to some epic science-fiction film, then shining brightly on that list would be the fact that we exist in a financial universe that is subject to massive gravitational pulls from states. States tug at us. States bend us. And, tirelessly, states seek to determine our orbits.
Mohsin Hamid
But since the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, terrorists have killed many times that number of people in Pakistan. Tens of thousands have died here in terror and counterterror violence, slain by bombs, bullets, cannons, and drones. America's 9/11 has given way to Pakistan's 24/7/365. The battlefield has been displaced. And in Pakistan it is much more bloody.
Mohsin Hamid
Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you're with them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can.
Mohsin Hamid