Hisham Matar Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Hisham Matar:

The Arab Spring is a powerful and compelling response not only to an age of tyranny but also to the remnant chains of imperial influence.

We got rid of Muammar Gaddafi. I never thought I would be able to write these words.

Hisham Matar

Books have shown me horror and beauty.

Hisham Matar

I ultimately write for myself and the people I love.

Hisham Matar

There's something very bizarre about having a father who has disappeared. It's very hard to articulate.

Hisham Matar

I sometimes wonder if I would have become a writer if what happened to my father hadn't happened.

Hisham Matar

My father believed in armed struggle.

Hisham Matar

In Libya, I did well at school because I was clever. In Egyptian public school, I got the highest marks for the basest of reasons. And in the American school, I struggled. Everything - mathematics, the sciences, pottery, swimming - had to be conducted in a language I hardly knew and that was neither spoken in the streets nor at home.

Hisham Matar

Ivan Turgenev's novella 'First Love' is one of the most perfect things ever written.

Hisham Matar

There's always a problem when you write, something you're trying to resolve, and sometimes a view can be inspiring.

Hisham Matar

Audacity, hope, courage - the Libyans have these in abundance. But all those boring little things - like organization, building a committee - is hard; making decisions and moving ahead is hard.

Hisham Matar

I lost my father when I was 19, so the majority of my life has been under this cloud, and I have been full of the intention to find out what happened.

Hisham Matar

My parents were fairly laid-back, but there were certain things about which they were very strict. My brother and I were told never to turn away a person in need. And it didn't matter what we thought of their motives, whether they were truly in need or not.

Hisham Matar

Switching languages is a form of conversion. And like all conversions, whether it's judged a failure or a success, it excites the desire to leave, go elsewhere, adopt a new language and start all over again. It also means that a conscious effort is demanded to remain still.

Hisham Matar

I've never been particularly interested in genre distinctions. They seem to me more useful to a librarian than to a writer.

Hisham Matar

My father, the political dissident Jaballa Matar, disappeared from his home in Cairo in March 1990.

Hisham Matar

I used to believe that it was not possible to lose someone I loved without sensing it somehow, without feeling something shift. But it's not true. People can die, sometimes the closest people to us, without us noticing a thing.

Hisham Matar

I've very aware of my rootlessness.

Hisham Matar

When I was 12 years old, living in Cairo, my parents enrolled me in the American school. Most of the Americans there appeared oddly stifled, determined to remain, if not physically then sentimentally, back in the United States.

Hisham Matar

Libyans are deeply unsettled by Gaddafi and his regime's careless contempt for human life. The dictatorship is willing to employ any methods necessary to remain in power.

Hisham Matar

My parents left Libya in 1979, escaping political repression, and settled in Cairo. I was nine.

Hisham Matar

Grenfell, the building set on fire with the help of its own face, is a scene of a complex injustice: one that is moral, economic, political, and aesthetic. Not only was the cladding unsafe, it was ugly; not only was it ugly, it was untrue both to the architecture of the building it covered and untrue to its responsibility to human safety.

Hisham Matar

Over the centuries, close-knit tribes have played an important part in the cohesion of Libyan society.

Hisham Matar

Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides.

Hisham Matar

Making something of loss is, on some level, satisfying.

Hisham Matar

Growing up in the Libya of the 1970s, I remember the prevalence of local bands who were as much influenced by Arabic musical traditions as by the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. But the project of 'Arabisation' soon got to them, too, and western musical instruments were declared forbidden as 'instruments of imperialism.'

Hisham Matar

I don't remember a time when words were not dangerous.

Hisham Matar

I think my generation's inability to speak in absolute terms when it comes to politics is a very positive thing; it's made us more nuanced, made us more complex.

Hisham Matar

The Arab Spring is a powerful and compelling response not only to an age of tyranny but also to the remnant chains of imperial influence.

Hisham Matar

We need a father to rage against.

Hisham Matar

I've never thought of myself in terms of an identity. I'm always baffled when I encounter someone who gives the impression about being confident about a particular defined identity.

Hisham Matar

My earliest memory of books is not of reading but of being read to. I spent hours listening, watching the face of the person reading aloud to me.

Hisham Matar

I've always said - I've always said I'm not, by temperament, a romantic about revolutions or given to revolutions. I've always thought that they are not the ideal way to change.

Hisham Matar

As a young boy in Libya, it was hard to escape the conclusion that the women were the most feeling and most functional part of society.

Hisham Matar