126 Quotes by Hisham Matar

If we were all engaged in some conversation, she would direct most of her contributions towards me, as if I were the front wall of a squash court.

So old and persistent did Mother’s unhappiness seem that I had never stopped to ask its true cause. Nothing is more acceptable than that which we are born into.

History remembers Mussolini as the buffoonish Fascist, the ineffective silly man of Italy who led a lame military campaign in the Second World War, but in Libya he oversaw a campaign of genocide. The.

Encountering our dialect during those years was always disconcerting, provoking in me, and with equal force, both fear and longing.

Naoma, and to the rest of the world she was Um.

It represented, in moments of desperation, the possibility of finally cheating myself out of exile.

There is a moment when you realise that you and your parent are not the same person, and it usually occurs when you are both consumed by a similar passion.

It’s one thing not to fear death, another to sing under its sword.

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.