When I found myself in the U.S., and the war was at full swing in Bosnia, I read for survival - it… — 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
The funny thing is that in Bosnia there are no words that are equivalent to fiction and nonfiction. From the storytelling point… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
For people who are displaced, you can reconstruct the story of your life from the objects you have access to, but if… — 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
To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share
I want to change something. I want to stop the germs from attacking my daughters. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share
