Quote

I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.

Aleksandar Hemon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Aleksandar Hemon
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: September 9
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
City of Sarajevo
Humans
Otherwise
Writing
Available
Literature
Knowledge
Read
Experience
Write
Contains
Human
Assumption

More quotes by Aleksandar Hemon

Image
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
Image
Memory narrativises itself.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
I wanted us to share the sense that the number of wrong moves far exceeds the number of good moves, to share the frightening instability of the correct decision, to bond in being confounded.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
My skin was the border between the world and me.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
Lord, why did you leave me in these woods?
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
We apply the language that is comforting and comfortable and familiar in order to grasp that which confuses and scares us. That is the first step toward cliché and stereotype, as they're comforting devices. They reduce the confusing world to the already familiar. We're always smoothing out the bumps of actual living to turn it into narratable life.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
I end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this and that.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
I started appreciating and valuing different things. Some things just became insufferable to me, and not just literature. I used to like horror movies and now I couldn't stand them.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
There are moments in life when it is all turned inside out--what is real becomes unreal, what is unreal becomes tangible, and all your levelheaded efforts to keep a tight ontological control are rendered silly and indulgent.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
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
Image
Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
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
Image
The balls do not make a writer.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
To write has to be related to a drive inside.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
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
Image
People will always tell stories. The publishing industry might vanish, but not stories.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
I wish I could avoid the people who have threatened me. My favorite threat is that I will be thrown in the River Miljacka, which is at most knee-deep, with my feet bound in cement.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
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
Image
To me, the solidarity of readers is far more important than the solidarity of writers, particularly since readers in fact find ways to connect over a book or books, whatever they may be.
Aleksandar Hemon
Image
Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.
Aleksandar Hemon