I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.
Mohsin HamidRead
There is a huge sense of loneliness as people leave villages and move to cities. It's hard to find that human connection as you move away from where you started.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the feeling of loneliness that accompanies the migration from rural areas to urban settings and the loss of human connection.
Mohsin Hamid's quote emphasizes the emotional toll of urban migration, where individuals often experience a profound sense of isolation as they leave their close-knit communities in villages. This transition to the anonymity of city life can lead to challenges in forming meaningful relationships, underscoring the importance of human connections in our lives.
In practice
In a speech about urban development, one might include this quote to emphasize the importance of fostering community.
I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.
When the forces are aligning against hybridity, it harms everyone, as we are all migrants. Growing up in Pakistan, I know just how oppressive that kind of puritanical mindset can be.
Some of my relatives held on to imagined memories the way homeless people hold onto lottery tickets. Nostalgia was their crack cocaine, if you will, and my childhood was littered with the consequences of their addiction : unserviceable debts, squabbles over inheritances, the odd alcoholic or suicide.
Stories helped me unite parts of my existence that might otherwise have seemed irrevocably split by geography and time. And stories helped me find a future in which I, such a mongrel, could be comfortable.
I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking place in cinema, they have had to deal with that by digging deeper into who these people are.
Part of the reason people abroad resent the United States is something Americans can do very little about: envy. The richest, most powerful country in the world attracts the jealousy of others in much the same way that the richest, most powerful man in a small town attracts the jealousy of others.
No one ever saw all of him. It took me nearly four decades to allow my father his shadows, his reserve, to sit silently with him and not clamor for something more.
They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself
My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing [my mother] for something she couldn't help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father's death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.
I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that's not what America's about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them.
Wai Lin is the first Bond Girl who is on a par with Bond, someone who can match up with him mentally and physically. From the moment our characters see each other, there is a wariness and a recognition that this person is not who she or he seems to be.
You can date whoever you want, but you should marry the nerds and the good guys.
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