102 Quotes by Amitava Kumar

In 1997, Alain de Botton published his book 'How Proust Can Change Your Life.' I was charmed by it. I remember using it in a course on cultural criticism for a graduate class that had a mix of theorists and creative writers.

Like every other self-respecting academic, I'm distrustful of self-help books.

It is clear from Salman Rushdie's writing that politics and literature cannot be separated. Everything is political.

While I ridicule books of self-help, I'm also quite susceptible to them. They help simplify things.

A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract.

Each employed immigrant has his or her place of work. It is only the taxi driver, forever moving on wheels, who occupies no fixed space. He represents the immigrant condition.

A wonderful innovation of the Occupy Wall Street movement was the use of the human microphone - the name given to the body of the audience repeating, amplifying, each statement made by the speaker.

Everything in American public life, when it comes to race relations, serves as a frame for a history of violence and degrading humiliation.

The thing about good art is that it makes you look at things in a new way.