“Then everyone would retreat for a nap, after which we would have coffee and cake, sometimes an argument.” — Aleksandar Hemon Argument Copy Share Image
I am just like everybody else...because there is nobody like me in the whole world. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
Washington D.C.! Congress is full of self-declared outsiders. — Aleksandar Hemon Congress Copy Share Image
“The liar looks up toward it, hoping against hope that the voices in his head have told him the truth. ” — Aleksandar Hemon Hope Copy Share Image
“If my mind and my city were the same thing then I was losing my mind.” — Aleksandar Hemon City Copy Share Image
The more you lose, the more is to be lost, yet it matters less. — Aleksandar Hemon Football Copy Share Image
Everyone operates within their own domain and obviously those domains overlap to a great extent. — Aleksandar Hemon Domain Copy Share Image
I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation. — Aleksandar Hemon Fiction Copy Share Image
“You have to create a form from the life that exists, not the other way around. If it comes out in these… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate… — Aleksandar Hemon Chicago Copy Share Image
“So you are Catholic? Didn't know that. I am nothing, I said. God knows God is no friend of mine. But I… — Aleksandar Hemon Atheism Copy Share Image
I don't make notes for myself because I either lose them or they make no sense to me at all. I once… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing… — Aleksandar Hemon Brain Copy Share Image
I've read books in school that were written by ideological rote - they were brainwashers. Therefore, any art, any literature, that has… — Aleksandar Hemon Art Copy Share Image
Whatever solidarity I have established with other writers individually, it is usually organized around books. We connected as readers, as it were,… — Aleksandar Hemon Book Copy Share Image
Europe has never been a monolithic space, it contains a lot of people, a lot of languages and infinite supplies of history.… — Aleksandar Hemon Art Copy Share Image
I never thought of myself as an outsider. Because outside of what? You would have to give advantage to this space where… — Aleksandar Hemon Advantage Copy Share Image
“But the moment you point at a difference, you enter, regardless of age, an already existing system of differences, a network of… — Aleksandar Hemon Identity Copy Share Image
“She could slip out of her shoes and leave them right here, stuck in the muck, and then get rid of her… — Aleksandar Hemon Heart Copy Share Image
“What you see is what you see, but that is never everything. Sarajavo is Sarajevo whatever you see or don't see. America… — Aleksandar Hemon America Copy Share Image
“What is life? This is no life. Who wants this life? The dead leave it to us to struggle in this world.… — Aleksandar Hemon Life Copy Share Image
Europe is a rapidly changing place, on every level. Immigration, post-communist transitions, the unification, steady presence of war and conflict, the inescapable… — Aleksandar Hemon Books Copy Share Image
“We know that laws ought to be obeyed only if they come out of people's sense of justice, not because the state… — Aleksandar Hemon Justice Copy Share Image
I'm a dilettante by temperament. I don't have any expectation. — Aleksandar Hemon Dilettante Copy Share Image
I don't believe in inspiration. I write when I can't avoid writing anymore. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
“Death comes and takes you away and there is nothing you can do.” — Aleksandar Hemon Death Copy Share Image
If I represent the world as it is as harmonious, that's a political position. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there. — Aleksandar Hemon Home Copy Share Image
In some way there is no real life. It's always the story of your life that you're living. — Aleksandar Hemon Life Copy Share Image
Because sometimes you have no control over life and it keeps you far away from who you love. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
An unjust world represented as harmonious is a political position. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
When I found myself in the U.S., and the war was at full swing in Bosnia, I read for survival - it… — Aleksandar Hemon Bosnia Copy Share Image
You are always working on your worst book and your best book at the same time. The praise does not make you… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of… — Aleksandar Hemon Cities Copy Share Image
Politics imagined as direct agency, whether by voting or by participating in politics, you can think you're not political because you don't… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
The privilege of a middle-class, stable, bourgeois life is that you can pretend that you are not complicated and project yourself as… — Aleksandar Hemon Bourgeois Copy Share Image
“Chief Shippy stands frozen, holding his breath, exhaling with relief as the young man dies, the gun smoke slowly moving across the… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I do believe - and I know I shouldn't - that art transcends money and success and any of that. You can… — Aleksandar Hemon Art Copy Share Image
