Hisham Matar Quotes

“Grief loves the hollow; all it wants is to hear its own echo.”

Hisham Matar book In the Country of Men

Source: In the Country of Men

“I think of novelists that I really return to and admire, you can almost sense that the book is somehow ahead of them, just a little bit ahead of them, no? You could write from the front: you could pull the book; there are masters that do that, and you can admire the architecture of it. […] I suppose what I look for as a reader is a writer who's risky, who's putting themselves in a position that's vulnerable, where the text knows a little bit more, is a bit ahead of them. And so I aspire to write those books, and that's why I suppose I put myself in that position.”

Hisham Matar

at 43:30.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

“I noticed that my problems occur when I try to dominate the text, when I try to ask it to be something, or to ask it to fit into some sort of structure, or when I ask it to compliment my ego, or all of these things. That's really where all my problems start from. Where it's going very well, is where I have sort of surrendered to it, you know, where I am behind the text, and I am watching, like a dancer who's following another dancer, and just watching where it might go next. All I want to be is, I want to be as ready and as available as possible for it. That seems to me all I really need to do.”

Hisham Matar

at 42:00.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

“Premeditated details arrive, when you're writing, and my instinct is always to reach for the nearest weapon.”

Hisham Matar

at 37:50.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)