“I used to be a keen rider. Sometimes I could sense what a horse liked or preferred to do.”
― Hisham Matar
“Like all novelists, I’m interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.”
― Hisham Matar
“Throughout my entire life, I have lived in the shadow of the dictatorship. It denied me safety and security.”
― Hisham Matar
“All great art allows us this: a glimpse across the limits of our self.”
― Hisham Matar
“The laws of the lowly gangster govern Qaddafi and his sons.”
― Hisham Matar
“To be okay with not knowing is a sign of a mature person and a mature society.”
― Hisham Matar
“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
“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
“Nothing makes you feel more stupid than learning a new language. You lose your confidence. You want to disappear. Not be noticed. Say as little as possible.”
― Hisham Matar
“In the same way that Egypt and Libya conspired to ‘disappear’ my father and silence writers such as Idris Ali, they made me, too, to a far lesser extent, feel punished for speaking out.”
― Hisham Matar
“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.”
― Hisham Matar
“One of the dark truths about dictators – and it applies to Gaddafi – is that on some level, they love their people. But it is a strange love. It says, ‘I love you for me; I don’t love you for you.’ That rhymes with a certain kind of Libyan father who was always certain about what was good for those around him. Those fathers lose in the end.”
― Hisham Matar
“Political dictatorships take possession not just of money and belongings but of narrative.”
― Hisham Matar
“One of the frustrations of prison life, which is also one of its intended consequences, is that the prisoner is made ineffective. He is unable to be of much use. The aim is to render him powerless.”
― Hisham Matar
“My parents left Libya in 1979, escaping political repression, and settled in Cairo. I was nine.”
― Hisham Matar
“In 2006, I published my first novel, ‘In the Country of Men.’ The publication of the book gave me a bigger platform to speak about my father’s abduction and Libya’s human-rights record.”
― 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
“Dreams have consequences.”
― 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
“Civil war is a national crisis and also a private trauma: We suffer it collectively and in isolation.”
― Hisham Matar
“The Arab Spring, with all of its failings and failures, exposed the lie that if we are to live, then we must live as slaves. It was an attempt to undermine not only the orthodoxy of dictatorship but also an international political orthodoxy where every activity must be approved by the profit logic of the ‘ledger.’”
― Hisham Matar
“We need a father to rage against.”
― Hisham Matar
“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
“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
“In the end, madness is worse than injustice, and justice far sweeter than freedom.”
― Hisham Matar
“I am, by instinct, wary of revolutions. The gathering of the masses fills me with trepidation.”
― Hisham Matar
“From before I was born, we Arabs have been caught between two forces that, seemingly, cannot be defeated: our ruthless dictators, who oppress and humiliate us, and the cynical western powers, who would rather see us ruled by criminals loyal to them than have democratically elected leaders accountable to us.”
― Hisham Matar
“I can pinpoint the exact moment when I first began to think about what profession I should go into. It was 1978. I was seven and had just been handed over by the women of my family to the earnest and self-important gatherings of the men. I was no longer the responsibility of my aunts and older female cousins. I was now a man. This was a tragedy.”
― 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
“As part of the ritual of becoming a man, my maternal uncle, a judge, and his four sons, each older than me, took me deer hunting.”
― Hisham Matar
“Over the centuries, close-knit tribes have played an important part in the cohesion of Libyan society.”
― Hisham Matar
“Ivan Turgenev’s novella ‘First Love’ is one of the most perfect things ever written.”
― Hisham Matar
“The cost of Colonel Gaddafi’s rule on Libyan society is incalculable.”
― 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
“We got rid of Muammar Gaddafi. I never thought I would be able to write these words.”
― Hisham Matar
“Gaddafi tried to give a masterclass to men like the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, on how to crush a civilian uprising.”
― Hisham Matar
“We have defeated Gaddafi on the battlefield; now we must defeat him in our imagination. We must not allow his legacy to corrupt our dream. Let’s keep focused on the true prize: unity, democracy, and the rule of law. Let’s not seek revenge; that would diminish our future.”
― Hisham Matar
“I don’t remember a time when words were not dangerous.”
― 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
“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
“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
“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
“Books have shown me horror and beauty.”
― Hisham Matar
“Nothing we read can import new or foreign feelings that we don’t, in one form or another, already possess.”
― Hisham Matar
“I get a lot of energy from making things up, which is why I feel I’m a novelist.”
― Hisham Matar
“I am terribly interested in the paragraph: the paragraph as an object, the construction, and the possibilities of what a paragraph can do.”
― Hisham Matar
“The space where writing happens is a unique space that’s hard to define, and when you’re kicked out of it because you’re travelling or distracted, it seems so elusive and hard to defend because you yourself doubt whether it existed.”
― 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
“Great writing fills me with hopeful enthusiasm and never envy.”
― Hisham Matar
“When a dictatorship imprisons someone or makes them disappear, it’s actually a very strategic move. We forget that. It’s not as senseless as it seems. It’s a way to silence someone, but also it’s a way to silence their family as well, out of fear, and society by extension.”
― 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
“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 never been particularly interested in genre distinctions. They seem to me more useful to a librarian than to a writer.”
― 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
“My father, the political dissident Jaballa Matar, disappeared from his home in Cairo in March 1990.”
― Hisham Matar
“My family settled in Cairo in 1980. I was nine. I missed Libya terribly, but I also took to Cairo. I perfected the accent. People assumed I was Egyptian.”
― 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
“I don’t believe people are interested in dates and facts. I don’t think it is interesting to say what it is to be this person or that, but I do believe it is entertaining and perhaps even of value to express how it is to be that person.”
― 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
“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
“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
“I ultimately write for myself and the people I love.”
― Hisham Matar
“I admire Turgenev, Camus, Proust and Shakespeare, but I’ve also learnt a lot about writing from composers and artists.”
― Hisham Matar
“My father believed in armed struggle.”
― 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
“From my family alone, Qaddafi had imprisoned five men.”
― Hisham Matar
“For an overwhelming majority of my life, my country has been a source of pain, fear, and embarrassment.”
― Hisham Matar
“I am longing to see Libya rejoin the world as the internationalist Mediterranean country that it was.”
― Hisham Matar
“Being my father’s son is a kind of privilege.”
― Hisham Matar
“Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides.”
― 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
“My work is my shelter, particularly in these moments when things are happening fast.”
― 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
“To me, writing is like singing in the most inappropriate place, singing as beautifully as you can on a bus or in a bank, where people least expect it, and trying to get them to want to listen.”
― Hisham Matar
“There is a tendency to over-exaggerate and over-romanticise the place of a writer in a revolution. That bothers me. I think it’s inappropriate.”
― Hisham Matar
“Making something of loss is, on some level, satisfying.”
― 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
“I think, ultimately, I am a sensualist and an aesthete.”
― Hisham Matar
“The romantic idea of the penniless writer is false. It’s terrible. I hated being in debt. I hated the anxiety of not knowing whether we could pay our rent that month. Thankfully, I had a wife who was very supportive and had faith and shared my madness.”
― Hisham Matar
“I’ve very aware of my rootlessness.”
― Hisham Matar
“Gaddafi’s ability to have survived so long rests on his convenient position in not being committed to a single ideology and his use of violence in such a theatrical way.”
― Hisham Matar
“It is evident that Qaddafi is mentally unwell. Like Richard III, he has barricaded himself within lies.”
― Hisham Matar
“The Qaddafis, father and sons, speak the grammar of dictatorship: threats and bribery.”
― Hisham Matar
“It is easy to underestimate the demands of an open heart.”
― Hisham Matar
“I hope and pray that I’ll be one of those fortunate people who have many, many books to write. I don’t begrudge writing. I love the whole thing!”
― Hisham Matar
“When I’m writing, my mood is very good – and I love life.”
― Hisham Matar
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