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
I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And then after a while I started… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
It was always clear to me that I would have to earn my readers, some I would have to find, some to… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
To me, the solidarity of readers is far more important than the solidarity of writers, particularly since readers in fact find ways… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
There is a logic [to my reading], but I can't define it. I like reading impulsively. I collect books, I have a… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I like to blur the line between fact and fiction, but not to condescend to the reader by enmeshing her/him into some… — Aleksandar Hemon 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 Copy Share Image
Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
My books have been published all over Europe. They read me there, and I want to read them back. I also spend… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
“Let me tell you a joke, Rora said. Mujo wakes up one day, after a long night of drinking, and asks himself… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
For a fight to be productive, or at least relevant, writers should fight over different demands they put upon writing (as an… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
There has to be a kind of grassroots push, a movement, as it were, against the inherent isolationism of American capitalism as… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist,… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I want a book to contain a world - indeed the world. Writing is my main means of engagement with the world… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that. — Aleksandar Hemon 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 Copy Share Image
I like the idea of a book being a democratic space which readers enter, carrying their own thoughts, and participate in a… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
When I came to America, I was already a writer, already published in Bosnia. I was planning to go back, but I… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
It's not that war crimes stop as soon as a novel about them is published. Literature operates slowly, it is always inching… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
“And the world around me was nothing if not an infinity of distractions: cute girls, novels and comic books, my budding record… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction. — Aleksandar Hemon 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
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 Copy Share Image
Even if you tried to extinguish your personality, what is left in the story will reflect it, perhaps by its negation. Our lives provide… — 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
I want to change something. I want to stop the germs from attacking my daughters. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
Cliché activates the comfortable mental laziness, we sort of revert to the domain of the already-familiar, what we have already imagined so that it… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
“The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I know a lot of people in the city, at all levels, horizontally and vertically - and that to me is a privilege, to… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
What fiction and art can do, particularly narrative art, is construct consciousness - in a sense, we have to do it for the first… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And then after a while I started writing shorter… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
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 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 you're not,… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
There are studies that have shown that we make decisions, ethical and otherwise, based on the way we imagine ourselves as characters in the… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image