About Kamila Shamsie: Kamila Naheed Shamsie is a Pakistani novelist who writes in the English language.
If the greatest loss of his life is the loss of a dream he's always known to be a dream, then he's among the fortunate ones.
There is no mystery-- that's the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is.
So she became a woman who held her head high, not in arrogance, or contempt, but because she knew that it was a form of cowardice to make a choice and then pretend you didn’t really make it
We should have stories in common, I found myself thinking. We should have stories, and jokes no one understands, and memories that we know will stay alive because neither of us will let the other forget.
Where are they, the American fiction writers whose works are interested in the question “What do these people have to do with us?” and “What are we doing out there in the world?
My ex calls the ochre winter 'autumn' as we queue to hear dock boys play jazz fugues in velvet dark.— Broken Verses
Character is just an invention, but it's an invention that serves as both reason and justification for our behaviour. - Broken Verses
When you can be this, why are you ever anything else? - Broken Verses
Difficult but worth it-- that's how my mother had once describe life with Omi.
We never actually have serious conversations about anything for more than 20 seconds. So there’s a beautiful superficiality to our relationship which sometimes gets covered up by all the genuine affection flowing back and forth.
You have this ability to find beauty in weird places.
I didn’t tell him that I grew up in an ugly city that taught me how to look between dust and rubbish and potholes to find a splinter of glass that looked like unmelting ice, beautiful in its defiance of the sun.
Come on! Think of Miandad hitting that six off Sharma. If he could do that, you can do this.
I'll fall.' 'You wont fall.' 'I'll fall. I'll fall and I'll die.' As I said it, I could see it happening. The foot stepping on air, pulling the rest of my body with it, tree limbs breaking as I plummeted down. 'No,' he said, his voice assured, 'You'd...
Her definition of romance was absentminded intimacy, the way someone else's hand stray to your plate of food. I replied: no, that's just friendship; romance is always knowing exactly where that someone else's hands are. She smiled and said, there was...
For a second I was almost jealous of the clouds. Why was he looking to them for an escape when I was right here beside him?
Bijli fails in the dead of night / Won’t help to call “I need a light” / You’re in Karachi now / Oh, oh you’re in Karachi now. / Night is falling and you just cant see / Is this illusion or KESC / You’re in Karachi now
They adore you beacause they think you offer up your friendship and ask for nothing in return. But that's not true-' He took a deep breath. 'You do ask for something. You ask that we never expect you to need us.
If we had more reliable systems of law and governance perhaps our friendship would be shallower.
How do you eat your roots?
