Mohsin Hamid citations

“Time only moves in one direction. Remember that. Things always change.”

“It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.”

“She was struggling against a current that brought her inside herself.”

“We are all migrants through time.”

“When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.”

“I responded to the gravity of an invisible moon at my core, and I undertook journeys I had not expected to take.”

“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.”

“To love is to enter into the inevitability of one day not being able to protect what is most valuable to you.”

“But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create.”

“It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books…”

“She attracted people to her; she had presence, an uncommon. Documenting her effect on her habitat, a naturalist would likely have compared her to a lioness: strong, sleek, and invariably surrounded by her pride.”

“Readers don’t work for writers. They work for themselves.”

“… status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declines more slowly than wealth.”

“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.”

“You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.”

“The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.”