"If I wasn't me, you wouldn't be you."

--

Source : Kamila Shamsie (2011). “Kartography”, p.7, A&C Black

Kamila Shamsie

“Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted.”
“I've heard that I've gotten a lighter complexion, as if I've bleached my skin. I think that is so stupid and ludicrous. For those who want to bleach their skin, that's fine. I just didn't bleach mine. I'm a black woman. I don't want to be anything but a black woman.”
“If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it's an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that's true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia.”

Source : "Prescription for Survival". A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy Between Anti-Coal Advocate George Monbiot and Anti-Nuclear Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott, www.democracynow.org. March 30, 2011.
“I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why.”
“But then people don't read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice, most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides.”
“I think it's really good not to get published. It sounds crazy but it's true. People want to get published very soon, but the moment that happens, you lose a bit of your originality. Once you publish, you are always doing things made-to-order. You stop being a weaver and become a tailor. You are tailoring things to suit other people's fashion.”
“Everything I know, I know because of love.”
“Cinema is all about going back from shadow to light and back and forth: cinema is a place of transgression.”

Source : "Juliette Binoche Honored at the Marrakesh International Film Festival" by Karin Badt, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 4, 2013.

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