Hisham Matar quotes

Hisham Matar is a Libyan-British writer acclaimed for his novels and memoirs exploring themes of exile, loss, and identity. His debut novel "In the Country of Men" was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and widely praised. He continues to be recognized for his powerful storytelling and contributions to contemporary literature. Here are 68 of his quotes:

Like most dictators, Col Gaddafi detests the metropolis. His vision of Libya is a kind of Bedouin romantic medievalism, suspicious of universities, theatres, galleries and cafes, and so monitors the cities' inhabitants with paranoid suspicion.

Hisham Matar

When you've been living in hope for a long time as I have, suddenly you realize that certainty is far more desirable than hope.

Hisham Matar

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

Hisham Matar

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

Hisham Matar

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

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

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

Hisham Matar

Nothing is more acceptable than what we are born into.

Hisham Matar

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

Hisham Matar

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

I noticed that my problems occur when I try to dominate the text, when I try to ask it to be something, or to ask it to fit into some sort of structure, or when I ask it to compliment my ego, or all of these things. That's really where all my problems start from. Where it's going very well, is where I have sort of surrendered to it, you know, where I am behind the text, and I am watching, like a dancer who's following another dancer, and just watching where it might go next. All I want to be is, I want to be as ready and as available as possible for it. That seems to me all I really need to do.

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

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

Hisham Matar

Some of the most powerful memories are those when you are very, very young. Adult life is seen through the reflection of complex, rational thought.

Hisham Matar

Living in hope is a really terrible thing.

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

There are two voices: the first says write; the second hardly speaks, but I know what he wants. And if I let him, nothing would get done. He hovers at the edges.

Hisham Matar

For an overwhelming majority of my life, my country has been a source of pain, fear, and embarrassment.

Hisham Matar

Architecture remains a passion and a subject I'm very interested in. I learned a great deal from studying it and working in it.

Hisham Matar

My best hope is that Libya turns into a peaceful, sensible country that has all the things my father and lots of others have been calling for: independence of the courts and press, a protected and democratic constitution, with different parties involved in a healthy and open debate.

Hisham Matar

One of the reasons why Gadafy's dictatorship has managed to remain in power for so long is not just because it has shown itself to be able to exact a great deal of violence, both psychological and physical, on its people, but because it has been very successful at imposing a narrative, a story.

Hisham Matar