Mohsin Hamid Quotes

I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.

The more I write, the more I've come to realize that books have a different place in our society than other media. Books are different from television or film because they ask you to finish the project. You have to be actively engaged to read a book. It's more like a blueprint. What it really is, is an opportunity... A book is a place where you're forced to use your imagination. I find it disappointing that you're not being asked to imagine more.

A book is actually a place, a place where we, as adults, still have the chance to engage in active imagining, translating word to image, connecting these images to memories, dreams, and larger ideas. Television, film, even the stage play, have already been imagined for us, but the book, in whatever form we choose to interact with it, forces us to complete it.

Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you're working. Tell them it's research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone.

You can't write if you don't read.

What better way to expand your imagination than to read!

Books are better than movies because you design the set the way you want it to look.

I wanted to become a writer. I enjoyed reading as a child.

The great thing about books is that you can end with a question mark.

I love books, and I love to read, and I had ideas for books that I thought would be neat to read.

The best way to enhance a child's imagination is to make them read.

Writing is something that I've always loved. That stems from my love of being a reader.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

I am happy to keep working on books because I'm always reading, and I'm always trying to fall in love.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

I grew up without a television. It meant that I read lots of books and entertained myself.

To me, this is one of the great things about writing kids' books: the illustrations.

I think that children who read are better writers, and children who tell stories appreciate books.

I'm actually not that big a fan of reading.

In reading, we are both scientists and poets.

[His] library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.

I was never bored because I always had a book. So I had a doorway into another world or another universe. It was great.

I look at all of world mythology and folklore as my toy to play with. There are just so many characters and creatures there I want to put on paper. It's a really exciting thing for me to take material that I really love and put a new coat of paint on it and present it to this audience. And I don't have to make up any of the characters. I can just pull a book of mythology off the shelf and say, "I'll use this guy." I also hate making up names for fantasy characters. I'll just flip through these books and say, "Wow, this is way crazier than anything I could make up".

The reason books get banned, but movies can do almost anything is because the novel is more powerful than a movie. The reader is part of the creation of the story because they must imagine and envision it. There is creation in the act of reading.

Books are packaged dreams.