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" It is easy to underestimate the demands of an open heart. "
Hisham Matar
Easy
Heart
Open
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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. "
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Man
Deer
Me
" It is evident that Qaddafi is mentally unwell. Like Richard III, he has barricaded himself within lies. "
Hisham Matar
Lies
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" 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
School
Got
Home
" 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
Live
Lie
Logic
" Throughout my entire life, I have lived in the shadow of the dictatorship. It denied me safety and security. "
Hisham Matar
Life
Security
Safety
" The laws of the lowly gangster govern Qaddafi and his sons. "
Hisham Matar
His
Gangster
Govern
" 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
Violence
Way
Single
" 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
Hope
Desire
Struggle
" 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
Language
Stupid
Learning
" 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
More
Think
Speak
" I think, ultimately, I am a sensualist and an aesthete. "
Hisham Matar
Ultimately
I Am
Am
" Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides. "
Hisham Matar
Just
History
You
" I get a lot of energy from making things up, which is why I feel I'm a novelist. "
Hisham Matar
I Feel
Feel
Why
" From my family alone, Qaddafi had imprisoned five men. "
Hisham Matar
Qaddafi
Alone
Family
" 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
Me
Place
Revolution
" I sometimes wonder if I would have become a writer if what happened to my father hadn't happened. "
Hisham Matar
Father
Wonder
Sometimes
" We need a father to rage against. "
Hisham Matar
Against
Father
Rage
" 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
Imagination
Unity
Future
" Books have shown me horror and beauty. "
Hisham Matar
Books
Shown
Me
" 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
Construction
Am
I Am
" 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
Courage
Decisions
Hope
" 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
Me
Living
American
" 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
Family
Accent
Missed
" I ultimately write for myself and the people I love. "
Hisham Matar
Myself
Write
People
" 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
Men
Moment
Man
" Being my father's son is a kind of privilege. "
Hisham Matar
Father
Being
Son
" 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
Long Time
Hope
You
" 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
Value
Think
People
" Dreams have consequences. "
Hisham Matar
Dreams
Consequences
" 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
Die
Believe
People