Hisham Matar

Grief loves the hollow; all it wants is to hear its own echo.

Nothing is more acceptable than what we are born into.

I wanted to wear her as you would a piece of clothing, to fold into her ribs, be a stone in her mouth.

Nationalism is as thin as a thread, perhaps that's why many feel it must be anxiously guarded.

My silence made her say things she didn't need to say.

I wanted this world to still. I wanted to fix it and be fixed within it. But everything was on the move, the clouds, the wind. . .

Can you become a man without becoming your father?

There and then, sitting beside her and within the strength of my adoration, I felt invincible.

In the end all that remains are numbers, the measurement of distances, the quantity of things.

How readily and thinly we procure these fictional selves, deceiving the world and what we might have become if only we hadn't got in the way, if only we had waited to see what might have become of us.

A corrupt mind turns everything to its advantage.