Whenever I was encouraged by my elders to pick up a book, I was often told, 'Read so as to know the world.' And it is true; books have invited me into different countries, states of mind, social conditions and historical epochs; they have offered me a place at the most unusual gatherings.

Hisham Matar

Categorized in : Me World Book Mind

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

Hisham Matar

echoes grief want

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 injustices - for the memory of a revolution reaches much further back than the memory of its protagonists.

Hisham Matar

struggle dream memories

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

fire giving book

The three things that help writing the most are living, writing, and reading. In that order.

Hisham Matar

reading writing order

There and then, sitting beside her and within the strength of my adoration, I felt invincible.

Hisham Matar

adoration invincible sitting

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

It is sometimes hard to escape the belief that history exists against the artist.

Hisham Matar

artist belief sometimes

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

opinion should writing

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

doubt justice men

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

writing men country

Nothing is more acceptable than what we are born into.

Hisham Matar

acceptable born

I used to be a keen rider. Sometimes I could sense what a horse liked or preferred to do.

Hisham Matar

rider sense horse sometimes

To be okay with not knowing is a sign of a mature person and a mature society.

Hisham Matar

not-knowing okay mature society

In the end, madness is worse than injustice, and justice far sweeter than freedom.

Hisham Matar

end madness freedom justice

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

Hisham Matar

over cohesion society important

Throughout my entire life, I have lived in the shadow of the dictatorship. It denied me safety and security.

Hisham Matar

me safety shadow life

Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.

Hisham Matar

like filters imagination reality

The laws of the lowly gangster govern Qaddafi and his sons.

Hisham Matar

govern laws gangster his

All great art allows us this: a glimpse across the limits of our self.

Hisham Matar

great limits self art

Turgenev's achievement lies in how he succeeded, in spite of himself, his country, and his time, in exempting his work from public duty. This has given it that unnameable quality that makes every sentence true, every silence trustworthy.

Hisham Matar

achievement quality silence work