Mohsin Hamid Quotes

I've never felt powerful enough to write a true political novel, or deeply knowledgeable enough to draw a character like, say, Tolstoy's Prince Kutuzov.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

The wrong people will do everything in their power to guarantee that the wrong political climate will continue. It seems, then, that the wrong people ensure the wrong political climate and the wrong political climate ensures the wrong people. How then to break free of this vicious circle?

I felt like challenging myself and challenging my readers with something darker and heavier. I don't know how to explain it, because I'm not a political person. I have two political stories, and that's it: 'Human Diastrophism' and 'Poison River.'

I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing.

It is not right that a servile race should inhabit the same locality which their ancestors inhabited in power and glory.

I'm all for philosophical debates about race, but if you look at history, you see that the status quo has power when it's unchallenged. So these conversations about inequality are crucial.

I like movies that project a dilemma of modern men and women who are overwhelmed by the system.

If you view history as a backdrop, set-dressing or fiction, then 'Pride and Prejudice' is hugely entertaining. My reread saw the misery of the female characters' reality. My new reaction was sadness and fury. Knowledge ruins everything!

My films are a personal reflection on the impact that the state - the system and the world - has on me.

Oppression doesn't disappear just because you decided not to teach us that chapter.

'An Octoroon' was written over about three years but premiered in 2014. I'm writing about America's relationship to its own history. Race or not, it's a story about suppression and oppression and many populations being devalued systematically.

I could write a whole other book called 'I'm Judging You, America!' I still might.

I am not, and never have been, a member of the 'White Establishment.'

Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.

Things like putting around a list and having your name on a list that objectifies you, that's a big deal, and it can have big consequences.

The character of Robin Hood stands for the deep anger of the dispossessed against the ruling classes.

When the things in front of you in life reveal how messed up the system is, you lose faith in the system pretty quickly. You develop a contrarian attitude. Your instinct is to disagree with the status quo and then, if you can, to try and shake it up.

A white man of authority don't ever want to admit to someone of colour they was wrong.

When something really affects you, it's hard to find the humor in it sometimes. There's are a lot of reasons why there are so many white male comedians, but I think part of it is that they are able to joke about a lot of things because a lot of things don't affect them personally.

Was 'Crucify Your Mind' dedicated to anybody? No, it was a generalization. 'A Most Disgusting Song' is like that, too.

Light-skinned privilege is largely through a white lens. It is exploited by oppressive forces... It was always a facade.

The more that I learn about what's going on, it's really hard to ignore the oppression that people are actually going through.

That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person.

There's a lot of hip-hop that's oriented toward a progressive view of America because it's oriented toward a civil rights progress and a critique of the power structure.