"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."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
at 43:30.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hisham_Matar
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar (born 1970) is a Libyan writer currently living in the United Kingdom, whose debut novel In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.
7 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Hisham Matar →
Related Quotes
"…I enjoyed the fact that I had a destination, and so the picture I was looking at became like an encounter with someo…"
"Writing is both the easiest thing and the most difficult thing. What makes it the one or the other for me remains unc…"
"…Since I was a boy I attended English schools. For this reason my English tends to be better than my Arabic. This is …"
"…Justice is educative, justice is apolitical, justice resists nothing, for it is the normative state, may even go as …"
"Premeditated details arrive, when you're writing, and my instinct is always to reach for the nearest weapon."
"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 …"