60 Quotes by Hari Kunzru

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.

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.

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.

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.

There’s an explosion of Indian fiction of all kinds, from military thrillers to chicklit. I think that’s exciting.

Intellectuals who live in Hungary, or who wish to work or lecture there, are extremely circumspect in their criticism.

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.

When you are powerless, something can happen to you and afterwards it has not happened. For you, it happened, but somehow they remember it differently, or don’t remember it at all. You can tell them, but it slips their minds. When you are powerless, everything you do seems in vain. You stow your bag, show your ticket, climb the steps. All the sinners climb aboard.

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.