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
“People here snarl and frown a lot, he wrote; he had seen neither a smile nor the sun in months. What is… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I don't know the numbers, but roughly half of the people who came through Ellis Island returned home. They came here to… — Aleksandar Hemon Ellis island Copy Share Image
If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the… — Aleksandar Hemon Home Copy Share Image
“I will never know you, nothing about you, what has died inside you, what has lived invisibly. I am elsewhere now.” — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
The incessant perpetuation of collective fantasies makes people crave the truth and nothing but the truth - reality is the fastest American… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
“We are within our life and we stay there for as long as possible, that's our home. We need life. There is… — Aleksandar Hemon Death Copy Share Image
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
For a fight to be productive, or at least relevant, writers should fight over different demands they put upon writing (as an… — Aleksandar Hemon Books Copy Share Image
In the olden days, a memoir was something written by Churchill and people like that, because they had a grand experience and… — Aleksandar Hemon Chance Copy Share Image
It is so much easier to deal with the dead than with the living. The dead are out of the way, merely… — Aleksandar Hemon Character Copy Share Image
I did not intend to stay; I had no experience in the United States - I may have been here less than… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
“Displacement results in a tenuous relationship with the past, with the self that used to exist and operate in a different place,… — Aleksandar Hemon Displacement Copy Share Image
I think it's interesting, from a creative point of view, to have witnessed the loss of consciousness on a national level and… — 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 Access Copy Share Image
The people who listened to rock 'n' roll, I thought, were bound together against the people who didn't listen to rock 'n'… — Aleksandar Hemon Bounds Copy Share Image
“If there are more dead than living, then the world is about death, and the question is: What are we to do… — Aleksandar Hemon Death Copy Share Image
“You've never been married, so you don't know, but it is a fragile thing. Nothing ever goes away, everything stays inside it.… — Aleksandar Hemon Fragile 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
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
“We are never as beautiful as now. The crushing sadness of hotel rooms; the gelid lights and clean notepads; the blank walls… — Aleksandar Hemon Beauty Copy Share Image
“It was a great fucking time, the short era of disaster euphoria, for nothing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming… — Aleksandar Hemon Cataclysm 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 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
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
“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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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 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
To me, the solidarity of readers is far more important than the solidarity of writers, particularly since readers in fact find ways… — Aleksandar Hemon Book Copy Share Image
“Isabel’s indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow.” — Aleksandar Hemon Absence Copy Share Image
I cannot think of a country in which I would be happy with the government and dominant ideology and available propaganda. — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
It is my belief that we as human beings have a need to tell stories - I think it's evolutionary. So you… — Aleksandar Hemon Belief 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
