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New York is the Hollywood of the publishing industry, complete with stars, starlets, suicidal publishers/producers, intrigues, and a lot of money.

Aleksandar Hemon

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Aleksandar Hemon
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: September 9
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
City of Sarajevo
Hollywood
Intrigues
Industry
Intrigue
Stars
Suicidal
Money
Publishers
Publishing
Producers
Complete
York
Starlets

More quotes by Aleksandar Hemon

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I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I've been a Nick Cave fan since the early '80s when he was part of The Birthday Party thing singing Australian self-destructive rock band and I've always followed his work and loved it.
Aleksandar Hemon
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My country's main exports are stolen cars and sadness.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I suppose I'm interested in sorrow, which is very different from depression or despair. Sorrow is continuous with the world it allows for creativity.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I don't think that everyone should have a philosophical answer to any given question. There are things that need to be done.
Aleksandar Hemon
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For people who are displaced, you can reconstruct the story of your life from the objects you have access to, but if you don't have the objects then there are holes in your life. This is why people in Bosnia - if anyone was running back into a burning house it was to salvage photos.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I'm a dilettante by temperament. I don't have any expectation.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I don't know the numbers, but roughly half of the people who came through Ellis Island returned home. They came here to make money, not to make history.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I like to blow up this notion that all we have to do as writers and artists is represent reality, which is presumably solid and self-evident, with no negotiation of the gap between myself and the world, between this body and this space, which needs narration to close it.
Aleksandar Hemon
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Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate a city with a history of racial segregation.
Aleksandar Hemon
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The funny thing is that in Bosnia there are no words that are equivalent to fiction and nonfiction. From the storytelling point of view, the difference is artificial.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I have been on the margins in terms of having to find a place to live and getting a job, but at some point, and before that point, I always thought no matter where I am, that's the center.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I want a book to contain a world - indeed the world. Writing is my main means of engagement with the world and I want the scars of that engagement to be left in the language.
Aleksandar Hemon
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Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I dont make notes for myself because I either lose them or they make no sense to me at all. I once found a piece of paper with the note: everything. Apparently I made a note to myself not to forget everything!
Aleksandar Hemon
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You can see the diversity that pieces in the anthology represent, and then the interconnections-obvious and less obvious-between various stories or between various modes of storytelling. Diversity generates need for conversation, conversation generates common interests, as well as differences. Literature, as a human project, is all about that.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.
Aleksandar Hemon
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One of the many conditions that have to be met for a brain to become a mind, and therefore have consciousness, is 'the analog I' around which all the simultaneous inflow of sensations and stimulations are reflected and organized.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I have two homes, like someone who leaves their hometown and/or parents and then establishes a life elsewhere. They might say that they're going home when they return to see old friends or parents, but then they go home as well when they go to where they live now. Sarajevo is home, Chicago is home.
Aleksandar Hemon