The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is. Aleksandar Hemon More Quotes by Aleksandar Hemon More Quotes From Aleksandar Hemon Language is so inherent to humanity, so necessary for even basic thinking, that stories and poetry are available to anyone who can process language. Aleksandar Hemon humanity stories thinking Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is. Aleksandar Hemon language literature stories I have been on the margins in terms of having to find a place to live and getting a job, but at some point, and before that point, I always thought no matter where I am, that's the center. Aleksandar Hemon places-to-live matter jobs Everyone operates within their own domain and obviously those domains overlap to a great extent. Aleksandar Hemon domain I never thought of myself as an outsider. Because outside of what? You would have to give advantage to this space where you're not, to think of it as sovereign because you're not there. I was always in the center of where I needed to be. Aleksandar Hemon space giving thinking You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility. Aleksandar Hemon style stories way The mind is complicated and you can't trace the roots of its processes, but there is something about mathematical and algorithmic patterns that I like to recognize in things. Aleksandar Hemon patterns roots mind When I was in high school, I was in a special math class. I was infatuated with physics, particularly nuclear physics, Einstein, and the Big Bang. I read a lot about black holes. And partly because I'm so lazy I thought you could do all this just by looking at the sky and thinking up universes. It didn't seem like hard work when I was a kid, so I enrolled in this class. Aleksandar Hemon hard-work kids school To write has to be related to a drive inside. Aleksandar Hemon related writing Even if you tried to extinguish your personality, what is left in the story will reflect it, perhaps by its negation. Our lives provide the bricks from which we build these cathedrals. Aleksandar Hemon bricks personality stories As long as there are living human beings, there will be language and stories. Aleksandar Hemon language stories long It's so internalized, the way your mind works in relation to anything - it's a process, but then it isn't. It's working all the time. Aleksandar Hemon process mind way I'm not nervous if I think about something for nine years and then I don't write it. Even if it fades it doesn't concern me. It'll come back if it's worth it. Aleksandar Hemon writing years thinking I think about the story while I think about other things. This is an important part of the process: I look at it sideways. If I look straight at it, it produces nothing other than what seem like complicated, brilliant designs that fall apart the following morning. In some way stories mature when you're not looking. Aleksandar Hemon morning fall thinking There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to talk myself out of writing, sometimes for many years, and when I run out of arguments, I write. Aleksandar Hemon writing running thinking Chicago is not a bad place to live. But the usual story of immigration is the happy fulfillment of human potential in America that is not available anywhere else - it's propaganda, really. It's more complicated than that. Aleksandar Hemon chicago usual america I don't know the numbers, but roughly half of the people who came through Ellis Island returned home. They came here to make money, not to make history. Aleksandar Hemon islands home numbers Cliché activates the comfortable mental laziness, we sort of revert to the domain of the already-familiar, what we have already imagined so that it doesn't seem that bad. Aleksandar Hemon familiar domain laziness Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly. Aleksandar Hemon ethics morality What I was interested in is the lens organizing my sovereign space. I avoid the term outsider and also exile for the same reason. Outsider implies a kind of nobility. Aleksandar Hemon sovereign lenses space
