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" Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Over the centuries, close-knit tribes have played an important part in the cohesion of Libyan society. "

" I am terribly interested in the paragraph: the paragraph as an object, the construction, and the possibilities of what a paragraph can do. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I am, by instinct, wary of revolutions. The gathering of the masses fills me with trepidation. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I've very aware of my rootlessness. "

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

" Books have shown me horror and beauty. "

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

" I think, ultimately, I am a sensualist and an aesthete. "

" 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. "

" Throughout my entire life, I have lived in the shadow of the dictatorship. It denied me safety and security. "

" We need a father to rage against. "

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

" 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. "

" Nothing we read can import new or foreign feelings that we don't, in one form or another, already possess. "

" 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. "

" Architecture remains a passion and a subject I'm very interested in. I learned a great deal from studying it and working in it. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I've never been particularly interested in genre distinctions. They seem to me more useful to a librarian than to a writer. "