Aleksandar Hemon Quotes

• Memory narrativises itself.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Memory

  Tags in Itself

• I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I’m not a novelist, I’m a writer.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Resist, Implies

• I long for, not a writer’s retreat – I can write in any situation – but a reader’s retreat.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Retreat, Situation

• I like to blur the line between fact and fiction, but not to condescend to the reader by enmeshing her/him into some sort of a postmodern coop.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fiction, Reader

• I’ve been a Nick Cave fan since the early ’80s when he was part of The Birthday Party thing singing Australian self-destructive rock band and I’ve always followed his work and loved it.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Followed, Fan

• For people who are displaced, you can reconstruct the story of your life from the objects you have access to, but if you don’t have the objects then there are holes in your life. This is why people in Bosnia – if anyone was running back into a burning house, it was to salvage photos.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Photos, Access

• In Bosnian, there’s no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there’s no word describing that.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Nonfiction, Distinction

• I cannot stand that whole game of confession, that is: Here I have sinned, now I’m confessing my sins, and describing my path of sin and then in the act of confession I beg for your forgiveness and redemption.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Forgiveness, Sins

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Stories, Mature

• I have two homes, like someone who leaves their hometown and/or parents and then establishes a life elsewhere. They might say that they’re going home when they return to see old friends or parents, but then they go home as well when they go to where they live now. Sarajevo is home, Chicago is home.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Elsewhere, Return

• Death comes and takes you away and there is nothing you can do.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Nobody deserves death, yet everybody gets it.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Death

• We dream of light, but hoped for darkness.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Dream

• Time does nothing but hand you down shabbier and older things.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time

• Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Belief

• Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Life

• Your memories become fantasies if they are not shared, and your life in all its triviality becomes a legend.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Memory

• When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Life

• Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Life

• All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Topics in Life

Aleksandar Hemon (40)

Birth:	9th September, 1964
Nationality:	American, Bosnian
Profession:	Essayist, Novelist, Writer

About

Aleksandar Hemon is a Bosnian American fiction writer, essayist, and critic. He has written five books: The Book of My Lives; Love and Obstacles: Stories; The Lazarus Project: A Novel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, and was named as a New York Times Notable Book and New York magazine's No. 1 Book of the Year; Nowhere Man, also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The Question of Bruno: Stories.

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Today's Anniversary - 25th May

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