Quotes by Hari Kunzru - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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I'm fascinated by the emergence of a global class. They're highly mobile; they reject the idea of place.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Class
Emergence
Fascinated
Ideas
Rejects
Reject
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There's an explosion of Indian fiction of all kinds, from military thrillers to chicklit. I think that's exciting.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Fiction
Indian
Military
Thinking
Thrillers
Explosion
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Intellectuals who live in Hungary, or who wish to work or lecture there, are extremely circumspect in their criticism.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Criticism
Hungary
Lectures
Wish
Intellectuals
Lecture
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I think it's important for all culturally literate people to understand the technological substrate of new developments.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Important
People
Thinking
Important People New
Developments
People New Important
Literate
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Critchley and Webster’s fierce, witty exploration of Hamlet makes most other writing about Shakespeare seem simpleminded.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Fierce
Witty
Writing
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There's nothing New York likes more than a thing. Or a place. Or a place that's a thing. Or a thing that happens to be a place.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
New York
Happens
Likes
Nothing New
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In my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Imagination
Fantasy
Fiction
Outcast
Science Fiction
Teens
Appeal
Status
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When I try to understand somebody, create a character, I fall into them. When I think writers are telling me what to think, I get harrumphy.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Character
Fall
Thinking
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I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Good Day
Meaningless
Noble
Pointless
Seems
Writing
Life Good Day
Life Good Good Day
Version
Becomes
Times
My Life
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Suburbia is all about private ownership and not having to share, and it leads to a paranoid, defensive mindset. I know this, having grown up in Essex.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Essex
Mindset
Ownership
Suburbia
Defensive
Grown
Leads
Private Ownership
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I suffer from vertigo. It's paralyzing in extreme situations. The most scared I've been as an adult was trying to conquer that fear by going climbing in Wales.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Climbing
Conquer
Suffering
Trying
Vertigo
Wales
Extreme
Suffer
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I like moral judgment to emerge from the reader. We are being sold a very simplistic morality by our leaders at a time when nuance and understanding are at a premium.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Leader
Morality
Nuance
Premium
Reader
Understanding
Emerge
Simplistic
Sold
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Some books I've kept because the binding is beautiful - I'm unlikely ever to read my grandmother's copy of 'The Life of Lord Nelson.' I'm addicted to secondhand bookshops.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Beautiful
Binding
Book
Grandmother
Lord
Nelson
Unlikely
Copy
Secondhand
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I stand on my public record as a defender of the human rights of Muslims, notably my work for Moazzam Begg and other British Muslims detained without trial in Guantanamo Bay.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Guantanamo
Guantanamo Bay
Human Rights
Records
Rights
Trials
Bay
Defender
Detained
Muslims
Trial
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I enjoy thinking myself into other times and places. I don't like some of the conventions of the 'historical novel', but I think there's a way of doing it that has a lot of merit.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Conventions
Historical Novels
Merit
Thinking
Way
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There are still some terrible cliches in the presentation of Indian fiction. The lotus flower. The hennaed hands. In mainland Europe, people still slap these images on my books and I go bananas.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Bananas
Book
Flower
Hands
Indian
Presentation
Slap
Terrible
Cliches
Images
Lotus
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But it's the particularity of a place, the physical experience of being in a place, that makes it onto the page. That's why I don't just do library research. I very rarely write about somewhere I haven't been.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Library Research
Pages
Writing
Onto
Page
Rarely
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There are things about our world that almost by their nature defy our ability to comprehend them. Some people use a religious register to deal with that - they call it God and that's a way of domesticating it.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Our World
People
Register
Religious
Nature God World
Comprehend
Defy
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I'm interested in complexity, in the mathematical sense, as well as the idiomatic sense. The idea of emergence - that it's possible for complex patterns to arise out of many simple interactions - is fascinating.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Arise
Emergence
Fascinating
Ideas
Mathematical
Patterns
Simple
Complex
Interactions
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Being in Harlem on the night of Barack Obama's election was extraordinary. It was the best street party I have ever gone to, and it felt like the period of American history which began with slavery had ended that evening.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
American History
Barack
Election
Evening
Extraordinary
Night
Party
Ended
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As I got older I became a kind of sub cultural junkie, foraging around in music, street fashion and eventually art, politics and the freakier reaches of the Internet, hunting the next discovery, the next seam of underground gold.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Art
Discovery
Fashion
Gold
Hunting
Politics Art Music
Cultural
Underground
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Say there are three identical-looking pizza joints on a street. Two of those will always be empty. The third will have a line of people patiently waiting, checking their phones. There's always one place that's the place. That's how it works.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Empty
Joints
People
Phones
Pizza
Two
Waiting
Waiting Always People
Checking
Patiently
Third
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These days we're all hyper-aware of the canonical way in which stories are supposed to play out - people are taught all about three-act scripting and where to put the reversal and all of that - and I think we can do more interesting narratives.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
People
Play
Reversal
Thinking
People Way More
Narratives
Scripting
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I tried to take seriously the idea that if you tortured language you might arrive at some new truth. Later it became clear to me that I was retreading ground by fighting the literary battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and that I was actually a bit bored by some of the books I professed to love.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Love
Book
Bored
Fighting
Love Truth Me
Arrive
Battles
Literary
New Truth
Professed
To Love
Tortured
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I realized I had a novel on my hands, but didn't know where it was going to go. So I thought, 'I'm going to do everything that you're not supposed to do when you plan a novel; I'm going to step back and let this thing take itself wherever it wants to go, and I'm not going to worry about how things connect until later on.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Hands
Want
Worry
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I realized I had a novel on my hands, but didn't know where it was going to go. So I thought, 'I'm going to do everything that you're not supposed to do when you plan a novel; I'm going to step back and let this thing take itself wherever it wants to go, and I'm not going to worry about how things connect until later on.'
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Connect
Wherever
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Several times in my life I've gone through long periods without sex or any other kind of physical contact. The hunger it produces is deep and low; it's possible to lose track of it, to forget or fail to perceive how it's emptied everything out of you and made the world papery and thin. Touch starved, you brush against existence like a stick against dry leaves. You become insubstantial yourself, a hungry ghost.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Long
Sex
Track
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In good novelistic fashion, the discovery I’ve made is that it’s complicated. I think that’s one of good things about exploring these questions in a non-polemic, fictional way: you get to feel out territory rather than take positions. Through writing this, I can understand the impulse to faith, how people make meaning, how people make community, without having to say, do this, don’t do that, or I believe, I don’t believe.
Hari Kunzru / Novelist
Believe
Fashion
Writing
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