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We, as writers, have to figure out a way to create a consciousness in language. It's crazy even to attempt to do that.

Aleksandar Hemon

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Aleksandar Hemon
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: September 9
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
City of Sarajevo
Figures
Consciousness
Crazy
Create
Language
Even
Attempt
Way
Figure
Writers

More quotes by Aleksandar Hemon

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It was always clear to me that I would have to earn my readers, some I would have to find, some to create.
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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Wherever there's capitalism there's this inclination toward simplicity. There's also a human need to process complicated things by turning them into something else.
Aleksandar Hemon
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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
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I've read books in school that were written by ideological rote - they were brainwashers. Therefore, any art, any literature, that has a clearly defined political goal is repellent to me.
Aleksandar Hemon
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Outsider means I will accept the possibility that I don't have responsibility for what is happening inside my domain.
Aleksandar Hemon
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There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters.
Aleksandar Hemon
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What I don't like about America is not necessarily an American thing it's a capitalist thing. This is the Vatican of capitalism.
Aleksandar Hemon
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Washington D.C.! Congress is full of self-declared outsiders.
Aleksandar Hemon
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The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.
Aleksandar Hemon
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What you demand from storytelling is a moral - even political - import. I tend to shun that didactic aspect.
Aleksandar Hemon
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What I was interested in is the lens organizing my sovereign space. I avoid the term outsider and also exile for the same reason. Outsider implies a kind of nobility.
Aleksandar Hemon
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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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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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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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I'm not nervous if I think about something for nine years and then I don't write it. Even if it fades it doesn't concern me. It'll come back if it's worth it.
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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Every artist, writers included, have an ethics and an aesthetics, whether they can formulate them or not. I happen to think that it is good to be able to formulate - it is good to know what you are doing and to be able to talk about it.
Aleksandar Hemon
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I know a lot of people in the city, at all levels, horizontally and vertically - and that to me is a privilege, to me as a person but also a writer. I've dined with billionaires, and I play soccer with busboys.
Aleksandar Hemon
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When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.
Aleksandar Hemon