Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
All Quotes by author - Leila Slimani
" A nanny is a woman who lives in an apartment, but the apartment is not her own. She raises children, teaches them how to walk, how to speak; she gives them food - but these children are not her children. So she is in a very ambiguous place. "
Speak
Woman
Walk
" Authorities in Rabat believe that if we create a Moroccan character, even in a work of fiction, we are responsible for the image of Moroccan women. "
Create
Character
Believe
" Authors have a nationality; books do not. "
Books
Authors
Nationality
" Human darkness fascinates me; I find it intriguing. And there are few female characters who are explored in this light. "
Who
Me
Light
" I am not afraid of being a pariah. "
I Am
Afraid
Being
" I am not patriotic or nationalistic, but the French language is like a country where I take refuge when I have nowhere else to go. It consoles me for everything. For me, the language no longer belongs to the colonialists. "
I Am
Language
Country
" I don't listen to music. I know it's weird, and I have no explanation for that. But I never do. "
Never
Listen
Know
" I don't really consider myself an immigrant, because I was born French; I have always spoken the language. I never had the feeling of being a foreigner. I was very lucky: I came to France, and I had enough money to study and to rent a studio. So, for me, it was not difficult. "
Language
Myself
Money
" I had a nanny growing up in Morocco, and my parents encouraged me to put myself in her shoes sometimes. "
Parents
Myself
Me
" I knew I wanted to write about a nanny, but it was difficult for me to find a narrative rhythm. "
Me
Find
Difficult
" I like anti-hero women. Negative female characters interest me. "
Me
Women
Like
" I like to describe my characters as though they were all trapped in a glass box. "
Glass
Describe
Box
" I remember that the first time I looked at my son, of course I felt love. But I think the first feeling was not love: it was fear. Someone is needing me. If something happens to him, what am I going to do? Maybe I won't survive if something happens to him? The fear was as big as the love. "
Time
Love
Son
" I remember, when I was a teenager, people telling me, 'You know, when you are a mother, you will never feel lonely. You will feel so much love, and you will be fulfilled by this love.' Then I became a mother. And I learnt that is absolutely wrong: you can feel very lonely with your children, even if you love them. "
Me
People
Mother
" I think maternal instinct is a male construct that has been used for centuries to keep women in their place, at home. "
Keep
Women
Used
" I, too, am interested in identity and Islam, which is what people expect of us. But one must not write what is expected. It's important for North African writers to show they have other things to say. "
Say
Identity
Important
" Let's stop hiding behind a pseudo-respect of cultures, in a sickening relativism that's only a mask for our cowardice, our cynicism, and our powerlessness. I, born Muslim, Moroccan, and French, I will say it to you: Sharia makes me vomit. "
Say
Me
Mask
" Motherhood is not only something very pure and very full of love, it can be full of dark things, too. "
Things
Dark
Motherhood
" My parents were lovers of books, and they raised us in a manner that viewed freedom and subversion as indispensable. "
Parents
Us
Freedom
" One of the big mistakes of the Moroccan elite and the elite in the Muslim world was to be afraid of the conservatives. They are fighting for their ideas. Why shouldn't we fight for our ideas? "
Ideas
Mistakes
Fight
" People are not born evil, although we all have evil within us. "
People
Evil
Within
" The only way you can know someone is through their actions - you can never know what's going on inside them. "
Inside
Know
Never
" When I was a little girl, my first link to the world was as a reader. Sometimes, I feel a nostalgia for those times, for all the emotions I felt as a child - discovering novels, discovering Dickens, Balzac, or Dostoevsky. I wanted to be like those men. "
World
Girl
Feel
" When you live closely with people, you don't see who they really are. In particular, with nannies, they only exist in your home, and when they leave, they don't really exist anymore for you. "
See
Home
Leave
" You have to fight against all the things that will keep you out of writing, because life doesn't go with writing. You will always have something more important to do: you will have to take your children to school, you will have to cook something, you have to meet friends. But you have to fight if you want to write. "
Children
Fight
Life
Check our other websites:
BookDark
MusicDark