Sometimes I don't write at all. Someone once asked me, "What do you do when you're not writing?" And I said, "I… — 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
There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it. — 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 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
Writing is a mode of agency in the world that is different from mere employment. There has to be some sort of… — 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
I like to blow up this notion that all we have to do as writers and artists is represent reality, which is… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
Every artist, writers included, have an ethics and an aesthetics, whether they can formulate them or not. I happen to think that… — 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… — 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
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
I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to… — 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
“Listening to Ella furiously and endlessly unfurl the yarns of the Mingus tales, I understood that the need to tell stories is… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
Every writer owes something to a particular tradition he/she grew up in. But no serious writer - other than the militantly nationalist… — 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 end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I'm bright, but there are lots of bright writers and people everywhere. In no way, at no point do I think I'm… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I'm not nervous if I think about something for nine years and then I don't write it. Even if it fades it… — 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
I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to.… — 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
“The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
Rilke said that art can come only out of inner necessity. I write because I must. Or because I cannot not write. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
We, as writers, have to figure out a way to create a consciousness in language. It's crazy even to attempt to do… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I don't believe in inspiration. I write when I can't avoid writing anymore. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
A particular piece of music attaches itself to the piece I'm writing, and there is nothing else I can listen to. Every… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
The trouble with calling a book a novel, well, it's not like I'm writing the same book all the time, but there… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I hate traveling and being away from my family. But I like meeting my readers, as what I write is actualized in… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I want to make money, and I would like to have a lot of money, but I still believe that the only… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
No reader owes me anything - I am owed nothing for my noble efforts, because my writing was always unconditional, always coming… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I actually didn't listen to the Beatles song 'Nowhere Man' when I was writing my book of the same name. What I… — 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
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
