Top 45 Hisham Matar Quotes

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

Great writing fills me with hopeful enthusiasm and never envy.

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.

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

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.

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

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

In the same way that Egypt and Libya conspired to ‘disappear’ my father and silence writers such as Idris Ali, they made me, too, to a far lesser extent, feel punished for speaking out.

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.

To be okay with not knowing is a sign of a mature person and a mature society.

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.

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.

The space where writing happens is a unique space that’s hard to define, and when you’re kicked out of it because you’re travelling or distracted, it seems so elusive and hard to defend because you yourself doubt whether it existed.

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.

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.’

In 2006, I published my first novel, ‘In the Country of Men.’ The publication of the book gave me a bigger platform to speak about my father’s abduction and Libya’s human-rights record.

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

Political dictatorships take possession not just of money and belongings but of narrative.

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.

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.

Ivan Turgenev’s novella ‘First Love’ is one of the most perfect things ever written.

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.

Being my father’s son is a kind of privilege.

The cost of Colonel Gaddafi’s rule on Libyan society is incalculable.

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.

Books have shown me horror and beauty.

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

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.

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.

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

Growing up in the Libya of the 1970s, I remember the prevalence of local bands who were as much influenced by Arabic musical traditions as by the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. But the project of ‘Arabisation’ soon got to them, too, and western musical instruments were declared forbidden as ‘instruments of imperialism.’

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.

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.

We need a father to rage against.

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

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.

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

I am longing to see Libya rejoin the world as the internationalist Mediterranean country that it was.

From my family alone, Qaddafi had imprisoned five men.

I admire Turgenev, Camus, Proust and Shakespeare, but I’ve also learnt a lot about writing from composers and artists.

We got rid of Muammar Gaddafi. I never thought I would be able to write these words.

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.

From before I was born, we Arabs have been caught between two forces that, seemingly, cannot be defeated: our ruthless dictators, who oppress and humiliate us, and the cynical western powers, who would rather see us ruled by criminals loyal to them than have democratically elected leaders accountable to us.

It is easy to underestimate the demands of an open heart.

As a young boy in Libya, it was hard to escape the conclusion that the women were the most feeling and most functional part of society.