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" We got rid of Muammar Gaddafi. I never thought I would be able to write these words. "
Hisham Matar
Never
Thought
Write
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" The Qaddafis, father and sons, speak the grammar of dictatorship: threats and bribery. "
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" I am terribly interested in the paragraph: the paragraph as an object, the construction, and the possibilities of what a paragraph can do. "
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" One of the reasons why Gadafy's dictatorship has managed to remain in power for so long is not just because it has shown itself to be able to exact a great deal of violence, both psychological and physical, on its people, but because it has been very successful at imposing a narrative, a story. "
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" Over the centuries, close-knit tribes have played an important part in the cohesion of Libyan society. "
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" I've never been particularly interested in genre distinctions. They seem to me more useful to a librarian than to a writer. "
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" We need a father to rage against. "
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" 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. "
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Consequences
He
" It is easy to underestimate the demands of an open heart. "
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" Great writing fills me with hopeful enthusiasm and never envy. "
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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. "
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" I used to be a keen rider. Sometimes I could sense what a horse liked or preferred to do. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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Effort
Desire
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" I admire Turgenev, Camus, Proust and Shakespeare, but I've also learnt a lot about writing from composers and artists. "
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Artists
Admire
" 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. "
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Die
Believe
People
" 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. "
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Place
Singing
" 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
" Making something of loss is, on some level, satisfying. "
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Making
Something
Loss
" Being my father's son is a kind of privilege. "
Hisham Matar
Father
Being
Son
" Some of the most powerful memories are those when you are very, very young. Adult life is seen through the reflection of complex, rational thought. "
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Life
Powerful
Reflection
" 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. "
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Struggle
" 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. "
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Me
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American
" In the end, madness is worse than injustice, and justice far sweeter than freedom. "
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" From my family alone, Qaddafi had imprisoned five men. "
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Qaddafi
Alone
Family
" To be okay with not knowing is a sign of a mature person and a mature society. "
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" 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. "
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" My best hope is that Libya turns into a peaceful, sensible country that has all the things my father and lots of others have been calling for: independence of the courts and press, a protected and democratic constitution, with different parties involved in a healthy and open debate. "
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" Architecture remains a passion and a subject I'm very interested in. I learned a great deal from studying it and working in it. "
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Studying
Passion
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" Civil war is a national crisis and also a private trauma: We suffer it collectively and in isolation. "
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Isolation
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" 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. "
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