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.Collection: Architecture
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.Collection: Architecture
Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Independence
Grief loves the hollow; all it wants is to hear its own echo.Collection: Grief
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Book
Nothing is more acceptable than what we are born into.Collection: Born
There and then, sitting beside her and within the strength of my adoration, I felt invincible.Collection: Sitting
The three things that help writing the most are living, writing, and reading. In that order.Collection: Reading
I wanted to wear her as you would a piece of clothing, to fold into her ribs, be a stone in her mouth.Collection: Ribs
It is sometimes hard to escape the belief that history exists against the artist.Collection: Artist
I am of the firm opinion that no one should tell writers what to do, or what to write, or how to write.Collection: 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.Collection: 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.Collection: Country