Kamila Shamsie



Kamila Shamsie (August 13, 1973) is a British Pakistani writer and novelist.

Quotes

 * The thing you know in the abstract, but which you have to see, is the vastness of the place and how little relationship one side of it has to another. Mostly, the landscape is just unbelievably beautiful. You do a lot of looking and not that much thinking.
 * On living and travelling throughout the United States in “THE SRB INTERVIEW: Kamila Shamsie” in The Scottish Review of Books (2018 Aug 11)


 * I don’t have much time for the idea that art is some languorous thing on the sidelines, and that you have to wait 50 years before you address a subject…
 * On writing about a topic even if it is recent in “Kamila Shamsie: ‘Being a UK citizen makes me feel more able to take part in the conversation’” in The Guardian (2017 Aug 27)


 * I tend to be an optimist about human nature but a political pessimist…I think we’re living in very, very scary times and we have to find ways of looking squarely at it and finding reasons for optimism.
 * On balancing pessimism and optimism in “Kamila Shamsie: 'We have to find reasons for optimism’” in The Guardian (2018 Jun 8)


 * …I am absolutely not someone who thinks that politics is separate from the most intimate details of people’s lives…
 * On how politics still seeps into peoples’ personal lives in “INTERVIEWS: Kamila Shamsie” in BookPage (2017 Aug 1)