Hisham Matar famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Grief loves the hollow; all it wants is to hear its own echo.
-- Hisham Matar

#Grief #Echoes #Want
Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih, is an eloquent and restrained portrait of one man's exile. It is a rare narrative in that it charts a life divided between England and Sudan. Without a doubt it is one of the finest Arabic novels of the 20th century, and Denys Johnson-Davies' translationdoes the original justice.
-- Hisham Matar

#Men #Justice #Doubt
Nothing is more acceptable than what we are born into.
-- Hisham Matar

#Born
I wanted to wear her as you would a piece of clothing, to fold into her ribs, be a stone in her mouth.
-- Hisham Matar

#Ribs #Pieces #Mouths
There and then, sitting beside her and within the strength of my adoration, I felt invincible.
-- Hisham Matar

#Sitting #Invincible #Adoration
When I first began writing In the Country of Men all I had was the voice of the protagonist. He intrigued me and my desire to want to know him and his world became almost compulsive.
-- Hisham Matar

#Country #Writing #Men
Dreams have consequences. There is no turning back. A revolution is not a painless march to the gates of freedom and justice. It is a struggle between rage and hope, between the temptation to destroy and the desire to build. Its temperament is desperate. It is a tormented response to the past, to all that has happened, the recalled and unrecalled injusticesâ€”for the memory of a revolution reaches much further back than the memory of its protagonists.
-- Hisham Matar

#Dream #Memories #Struggle
Books written out of fire give me a great deal of pleasure. You get the sense that the world for these writers could not have continued if the book hadn't been written. When you come across a book like that it is a privilege.
-- Hisham Matar

#Book #Fire #Giving
It is sometimes hard to escape the belief that history exists against the artist.
-- Hisham Matar

#Artist #Belief #Sometimes
The three things that help writing the most are living, writing, and reading. In that order.
-- Hisham Matar

#Reading #Writing #Order
I am of the firm opinion that no one should tell writers what to do, or what to write, or how to write.
-- Hisham Matar

#Writing #Opinion #Should

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