60 Quotes by Hari Kunzru

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.

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.

I’m fascinated by the emergence of a global class. They’re highly mobile; they reject the idea of place.

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.

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.

Nostalgia: from the Greek “nostos” – homecoming – and “algos” pain or ache: the pain a sick person feels because he is not in his native land, or fears never to see it again.

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.

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.

In my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal.