Quotessence
Home / Authors / Mohsin Hamid
Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllThinkingPeopleIfsPakistanWayWritingWorldKnowsNovelBookAmericaLoveHumansYearsCitiesNeedsMigrationSeemsIdeasKind

Famous Mohsin Hamid Quotes

“She’s drawn to me just as I’m drawn to her. She can’t keep away. She circles, forced to keep her distance, afraid of abandoning her husband and, even more, her son for too long. But she keeps coming, like a moth to my candle, staying longer than she should, leaving late for dinners and birthday parties, singeing her wings. She’s risking her marriage for me, her family, her reputation. And I, the moth circling her candle, realize that she’s not just a candle. She’s a moth as well, circling me. I look at her and see myself reflected, my feelings, my desires. And she, looking at me, must see herself. And which of us is moth and which is candle hardly seems to matter. We’re both the same. That’s the secret. What moths never tell us as they whirl in their dances. What Manucci learned at Pak Tea House. What sufis veil in verse. I turn her around and look into her eyes and see the wonder in them that must be in mine as well, the wonder I first saw on our night of ecstasy, and I feel myself explode, expand, fill the universe, then collapse, implode like a detonation under water, become tiny, disappear. I’m hardly aware of myself, of her, when I open my mouth. There is just us, and I speak for us when I speak, and I must be trembling and crying, but I don’t even know if I am or what I’m doing. I just say it. “I love you.” And I lose myself in her eyes and we kiss and I feel myself becoming part of something new, something larger, something I never knew could be. Union. There are no words.”

LovePassionSufismUnionMothEncircleCircumambulate
Book:Moth Smoke
Create image

“She is here. And she comes to you, and she does not speak, and the others do not notice her, and she takes your hand, and you ready yourself to die, eyes open, aware that this is all an illusion, a last aroma cast up by the chemical stew that is your brain, which will soon cease to function, and there will be nothing, and you are ready, ready to die well, ready to die like a man, like a woman, like a human, for despite all else you have loved, you have loved your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your son, and yes, your ex-wife, and you have loved the pretty girl, you have loved beyond yourself, and so you have courage, and you have dignity, and you have calmness in the face of terror, and awe, and the pretty girl holds your hand, and you contain her, and this book, and me writing it, and I too contain you, who may not yet even be born, you inside me inside you, though not in a creepy way, and so may you, may I, may we, so may all of us confront the end.”

LoveLifeDyingLivingDeathbedPoint Of Death
Book:How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Create image

“... and you are ready, ready to die well, ready to die like a man, like a woman, like a human, for despite all else you have loved, you have loved your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your son and, yes, your ex-wife and you have loved the pretty girl, you have been beyond yourself, and so you have courage, and you have ...”

LoveLifeDeathLiving
Book:How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Create image

“Mumtaz has six moles. Two are black: behind her ear and on her hip, in the trough of the wave that crests at her pelvis. Three are the color of rust: knuckle, corner of jaw, behind knee. And one is red, fiery, at the base of her spine, where a tail might grow. I touch them and know them because I watch her like a man in a field stares up at the stars, and I love her constellation because it contains her story and our story, and I wonder which mole is the beginning and which is the end.”

LoveMole
Book:Moth Smoke
Create image

“...човек невинаги може да възстанови личните си граници, след като е допуснал да бъдат размити и прекрачени от друго човешко същество в процеса на романтична връзка: колкото и да се опитваме не можем да възвърнем онази автономност на личността, която сме си въобразявали че притежаваме”

LoveRelationships
Book:The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Create image

“In 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.”

IfsWorldLoveKindStillsBookMomentsHandsSeemsAgeReadingWishTechnologyStruggleGreaterDoorsOffersSolitudeDegreesPaperProtectionDistractionInvitesSerenityInkShieldsPrintedHelmetPurchasingPrinted Books
Book:Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London
Create image