Mohsin Hamid Quotes

Indonesian writers are so far behind in terms of global exposure compared with the Philippines and Japanese writers.

I thought they would never select an Eastern writer for the Nobel. I was surprised.

The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.

I don't think I'm any competition to the already-existing canon of writers in Kannada. How can I ever even think of comparing myself?

I think that China has many outstanding authors, and their great works should also be recognised by the world.

I don't think if you're serious about literature your library is filled with award-winning books.

Herta Muller, Mo Yan, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio - for many of us, the Nobels have become doubly educational: We simultaneously learn of an author's existence and find out that we ought to have been reading him or her all along.

Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.

There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.

I'm a comedian who happens to be Latino. What's the difference? The difference is, my special will air on Comedy Central, not Telemundo.

I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world.

In Australia, the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle.

There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.

I don't know that I've gotten much feedback directly from the literary world; sometimes I doubt even the notion that there is a literary world, though I guess there is or was.

I have 5 children of my own. They are bilingual, like most second and third generations. But they speak primarily in English and they couldn't find anything on television that represented who they are in this country.

The Booker Prize is a big, popular prize for big, popular books, and that's the way it should be.

'Ancillary Sword' picked up the Locus and the BSFA, which surprised the heck out of me.

I associated excellence in writing with New York City.

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life.

Our literature is in great shape.

Most literature everywhere and of every time is bad.

The two endorsements I'm most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time.

I'm an idiot who won the Literature Nobel Prize.

I hate to tell you this, but I did not know what the National Book Award was when I got the call.

I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.