Mohsin Hamid Quotes

Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.

Well, the thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human.

The best subjects are always people, who never fail to amaze me by their unpredictability.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

A movie is about human beings, about humanity.

A novel is about people.

It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care about them that much, and, if the reader doesn't care about them that much, then they don't care what happens to them.

All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them to be.

The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

Everything we do is about the emotion of the characters. We believe the better the emotion, the better the movie.

That's been my main interest for the last 15 years, is to really make sure the story and the characters take precedence over everything else, and that I give them everything I can to make them exist as actual people.

When Peter Jackson did The Lord of the Rings trilogy with Fellowship of the Ring, not everyone had read Tolkien, and yet somehow with that scope and the spectacle of that fantasy, people were willing to give it a shot. And when they watched the first one, the characters drew them in and they started understanding the story. And then, all of a sudden, they were The Lord of the Rings fans, even if they never read Tolkien.

It's amazing how people can surprise you.

Novels are . . . an unsurpassed form to understand people.

I believe in characters that can be tangible, and that you can actually relate to.

I do characters. I believe in that. I think people are interesting. Now, everybody that you meet in New York City thinks that their life is a movie.

My books are based on emotions, feelings, relationships. In these areas women are experts, so it's not strange that the main characters of my novels are females.

The movies I make tend not to be quite reality but the characters are inspired by real people and they're always very personal.

The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently.

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.

Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

When you read a fantasy novel part of the fun is getting to explore a new world. Everyone knows that. But I believe the same is true about characters. You can explore interesting people in the same way that you explore a town or a culture.