An essay is not an op-ed that tells its reader what to think. An essay is a complicated working-out of one’s own contradictions and complicities. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
I’m not ashamed to confess that I often note down many of the crazy things my children say. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
I think criticism is often so pallid, so tame. I wish it were more performative. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
It’s so easy for folks to normalize their opinions, to engage in a groupthink that is damaging. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
When I close my eyes and think of a writer, I don’t imagine him or her as someone who is sitting above me on a pedestal, blindfolded, holding the scales of justice in one hand! No, I see sentences. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
All good works of art must ask this question: ‘You want to breathe free, yes, but do you know how to kiss?’ Amitava Kumar Read Quote
To write what is not dead on the page, one has to be open to all kinds of disturbances and challenges and confusion. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
Much of what we regard as truth in the war on terror is actually rather suspect. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
Long ago, when I was in higher secondary school in Delhi, I read an essay by George Orwell in which he said there was a voice in his head that put into words everything he was seeing. I realised I did that, too, or maybe I started doing it in imitation. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
In the U.S., the FBI or the people I met from the Department of Justice might be ignorant about Islam or about the East more generally, but I felt they were less willing to make blanket judgments about Muslims. This caution was less evident with some of the authorities I met in India. Amitava Kumar Read Quote
