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" Great writing fills me with hopeful enthusiasm and never envy. "

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" 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. "

" Living in hope is a really terrible thing. "

" The laws of the lowly gangster govern Qaddafi and his sons. "

" 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. "

" Dreams have consequences. "

" 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. "

" My work is my shelter, particularly in these moments when things are happening fast. "

" My parents left Libya in 1979, escaping political repression, and settled in Cairo. I was nine. "

" It is evident that Qaddafi is mentally unwell. Like Richard III, he has barricaded himself within lies. "

" To be okay with not knowing is a sign of a mature person and a mature society. "

" I am longing to see Libya rejoin the world as the internationalist Mediterranean country that it was. "

" The Qaddafis, father and sons, speak the grammar of dictatorship: threats and bribery. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I get a lot of energy from making things up, which is why I feel I'm a novelist. "

" 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. "

" From my family alone, Qaddafi had imprisoned five men. "

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

" We need a father to rage against. "

" Political dictatorships take possession not just of money and belongings but of narrative. "

" Being my father's son is a kind of privilege. "

" In the end, madness is worse than injustice, and justice far sweeter than freedom. "

" 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. "

" Gaddafi tried to give a masterclass to men like the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, on how to crush a civilian uprising. "

" 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. "

" Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination. "