A Quote by Mohsin Hamid

In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.

Mohsin Hamid

Quote Topics

American Ask Ask Me Car Color Corners Directions Fall Four Half Half Years Immediately Me Middle Never New New York New Yorker Skin Spectrum Street Street Corner Street Corners Subway Tourists Would Years Yorker

Quote Author

Mohsin Hamid
Pakistani - Novelist
Born: July 23, 1971

I would get so angry whenever I'd notice people looking at me weirdly. They'd even stop me on the street and ask questions about my skin color.

Khoudia Diop

The vision preached by my father a half-century ago was that his four little children would no longer live in a nation where they would judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. However, sadly, the tears of Trayvon Martin's mother and father remind us that, far too frequently, the color of one's skin remains a license to profile, to arrest and to even murder with no regard for the content of one's character.

Martin Luther King III

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street - you live in Time Square, you know how they do it - they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

B. B. King

The funny thing is, when I ask people with dark skin if they would change their color, they tell me no, and when I ask women if they would rather be men, they tell me no, and I get the same response when I ask people with unusual anatomies if they would take a magic pill to erase their unusual features.

Alice Dreger

I would never jump under a subway car because that would delay all the people behind me. How inconsiderate!

Signe Baumane

I still am amazed that people would never buy a car if they were told it gets 75 miles to the gallon - they're absolutely clear on what's a scam. But when it comes to their health they will immediately fall for somebody telling them, "Take this pill and you'll live to be a hundred years old." There's something about medicine that allows us to fall for stupid sales pitches more easily.

Dean Edell

When I was, like, 5 years old, I used to pray to have light skin because I would always hear how pretty that little light skin girl was, or I would hear I was pretty to be dark skin. It wasn't until I was 13 that I really learned to appreciate my skin color and know that I was beautiful.

Keke Palmer

My mom always said to us, "You cannot judge anybody because of the color of skin." There were a lot of African immigrants in Italy at the time, and people would not even say hi in the street. And my mom, she would invite these people to the house. This is what I got from my mom: to not judge people because of their sexuality, their skin color, their religion, nothing.

Riccardo Tisci

Kids ask me questions. You'd think after doing this for four years, I would have heard every single question anyone could think of to ask, but no, every time, they surprise me, they ask me something I never thought of before.

Rick Riordan

Autism's a very big spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, Einstein would probably be labeled autistic, Steve Jobs, half of Silicon Valley, you know, Van Gogh. And at the other end of the spectrum, you got much more severe handicaps where they never learn to speak.

Temple Grandin

I was 30 when 9/11 happened and I had lived exactly 15 years of life in America, so I was half American. I was a full-fledged New Yorker.

Mohsin Hamid

I like street performance because it's garbage time. The subway is garbage time: no one can say I'm wasting their time because they've already thrown that time into the subway. If they don't want to see me they can go to the other end of the platform. But on the street I do feel this disgust towards the audience: why would you waste your time looking at me? Why are you being so respectful of me? You should attack me.

Kalan Sherrard

If you were a kid in 1955, you would pick up a copy of 'Popular Science' and it would say, 'This is the kind of car you're going to be driving in five years or in 20 years you'll be able to take a jet plane from New York to London in four hours,' or something like that. We actually got used to the idea that the future's going to be different.

David Gerrold

Lilian Ross was a - veteran writer for The New Yorker. She, in fact, brought me to The New Yorker many years ago.

Nat Hentoff

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs.

B. B. King

But truth be told, I'm not as dour-looking as I would like. I'm stuck with this round, sweetie-pie face, tiny heart-shaped lips, the daintiest dimples, and apple cheeks so rosy I appear in a perpetual blush. At five foot four, I barely squeak by average height. And then there's my voice: straight out of second grade. I come across so young and innocent and harmless that I have been carded for buying maple syrup. Tourists feel more safe approaching me for directions, telemarketers always ask if my mother is home, and waitresses always, always call me 'Hon.

Sarah Vowell

A Quote by Mohsin Hamid

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors