Quotes from Mohsin Hamid

he had begun by feeling that under the surface, it was still him, who else could it be, but it was not that simple, and the way people act around you, a change is what you are, who you are, and Oona said she understood, but it was like learning, a foreign language, and when you tried to speak a foreign language, you lost your sense of humor, no matter how much you tried, you could not be funny the way you used to be…

Many boys, probably most boys, have a first love before they fall in love with a woman. It begins the moment two boys realize they'd die for one another, that each cares more for the other than he does for himself, and it lasts usually until a second love comes on the scene, because most hearts aren't big enough to love more than one person like that.

A little paranoia crawls into my lap, purring loudly.

She slips her arm around my shoulders and cradles my head against her breast. We breathe together. Slowly. Time passes, flowing, a long, less and less painful sigh. And I shut my eyes. Pain becomes only physical again. Fear recedes. Anger flickers for a moment longer, gas in the pipes after the stove has been turned off. She says, "I'll take care of you." And I feel gratitude and happiness rise up inside me: old friends, long-forgotten and yet much missed.

Indeed, all books, each and every book ever written, could be said to be said to be offered to the reader as a form of self-help. Textbooks, those whores, as particularly explicit in acknowledging this, and it is with a textbook that you, at this moment, after several years in the city, are walking down the street.

Look, unless you're writing one, a self-help book is an oxymoron.

Ozi made me feel so known. He made love to my insides, filling desperate gaps and calming unbearably sensitive places.

most powerful military in the world is sent to do a task best accomplished by schoolteachers, police forces, persuasion, and time.

I know I'm standing still, but I feel like I've stumbled and I'm starting to fall.

She's finished her cigarette but hasn't put it out properly, so it's still smoking in the ashtray. I crush mine into it, grinding until both stop burning.

I feel the illusion I've twirled around me like a sari start to come undone and fall to my feet.

If you don't pray," he said, lowering his voice, "why do you wear it?" They were sitting at a table for two by a window, overlooking snarled traffic on the street below. Their phones rested screens-down between them, like the weapons of desperadoes at a parley. She smiled. Took a sip. And spoke, the lower half of her face obscured by her cup. "So men don't fuck with me," she said.

It is odd, isn't it? Whenever I read something interesting, I tear out a piece and keep it as a talisman until I find something new to replace it with. It's a sort of superstition. I did it once and it helped me break out of writer's block, so I've done it ever since. Librarians must hate me.

I get in, and she turns the music down. It's Nusrat, remixed and clubby, but damn good as always.

There is something magical about London. It can coax a water lily to tie its roots to land.

Lightning's echo comes as thunder. And the city waits for thunder's echo, for a wall of heat that burns Lahore with the energy of a thousand summers, a million partitions, a billion atomic souls split in half.

I read it over and over again, until I notice the paper getting wet, the ink blurring into little flowers.

and all sorts of strange people were around, people who looked more at home than she was, even the homeless ones who spoke no English, more at home maybe because they were younger, and when she went out it seemed to her that she too had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can't help it. We are all migrants through time.

Children are excellent judges of character, you know

La confessione che chiama in causa l'ascoltatore è, come diciamo nel cricket, un demonio di palla da giocare. Se la rifiuti offendi chi si confessa, se l'accetti ammetti la tua colpa.

If differences can be hidden, perhaps there aren't differences at all

their absences would last until the child was old enough to attempt the crossing, or until the relative was exhausted enough to return, or on occasion, quite often, forever, because life and its end are unpredictable, especially at a distance, where death seems to operate with such whimsical aim.

There is in such situations usually a moment of passion during which the unthinkable is said; this is followed by a sense of euphoria at finally being liberated; the world seems fresh, as if seen for the first time; then comes the inevitable period of doubt, the desperate and doomed backpedaling of regret; and only later, once emotions have receded, is one able to view with equanimity the journey through which one has passed.

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain