I think there's a natural link between the fact that our self is a story that we make up and that we're drawn to stories. It resonates, in a way.
Mohsin HamidIn 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.
Mohsin HamidReligion is not something I like to talk about publicly. One reason is the politics, but also I think spirituality is deeply personal.
Mohsin HamidMaybe we are all prospective migrants. The lines of national borders on maps are artificial constructs, as unnatural to us as they are to birds flying overhead. Our first impulse is to ignore them.
Mohsin HamidIt'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 . . .
Mohsin HamidFor 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