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" My parents were fairly laid-back, but there were certain things about which they were very strict. My brother and I were told never to turn away a person in need. And it didn't matter what we thought of their motives, whether they were truly in need or not. "

Hisham Matar

Brother

Need

Person

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" 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. "

" 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

Place

Revolution

" Switching languages is a form of conversion. And like all conversions, whether it's judged a failure or a success, it excites the desire to leave, go elsewhere, adopt a new language and start all over again. It also means that a conscious effort is demanded to remain still. "

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

Hisham Matar

Imagination

Interested

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

" I lost my father when I was 19, so the majority of my life has been under this cloud, and I have been full of the intention to find out what happened. "

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

" My father, the political dissident Jaballa Matar, disappeared from his home in Cairo in March 1990. "

" For an overwhelming majority of my life, my country has been a source of pain, fear, and embarrassment. "

" The romantic idea of the penniless writer is false. It's terrible. I hated being in debt. I hated the anxiety of not knowing whether we could pay our rent that month. Thankfully, I had a wife who was very supportive and had faith and shared my madness. "

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

" 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. "

" I've never thought of myself in terms of an identity. I'm always baffled when I encounter someone who gives the impression about being confident about a particular defined identity. "

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

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

" Books have shown me horror and beauty. "

Hisham Matar

Books

Shown

" I hope and pray that I'll be one of those fortunate people who have many, many books to write. I don't begrudge writing. I love the whole thing! "

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

" 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. "

" Making something of loss is, on some level, satisfying. "

" I sometimes wonder if I would have become a writer if what happened to my father hadn't happened. "

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

Hisham Matar

Been

Never

" I've very aware of my rootlessness. "

Hisham Matar

Aware

Very

" I've always said - I've always said I'm not, by temperament, a romantic about revolutions or given to revolutions. I've always thought that they are not the ideal way to change. "

" 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. "

Hisham Matar

Man

Deer

" The Arab Spring is a powerful and compelling response not only to an age of tyranny but also to the remnant chains of imperial influence. "

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

Hisham Matar

Crush

Give

" There's something very bizarre about having a father who has disappeared. It's very hard to articulate. "