When I'm writing, my mood is very good - and I love life.
— Hisham Matar
The Qaddafis, father and sons, speak the grammar of dictatorship: threats and bribery.
Gaddafi's ability to have survived so long rests on his convenient position in not being committed to a single ideology and his use of violence in such a theatrical way.
I think, ultimately, I am a sensualist and an aesthete.
There is a tendency to over-exaggerate and over-romanticise the place of a writer in a revolution. That bothers me. I think it's inappropriate.
My work is my shelter, particularly in these moments when things are happening fast.
To be okay with not knowing is a sign of a mature person and a mature society.
I am longing to see Libya rejoin the world as the internationalist Mediterranean country that it was.
Political dictatorships take possession not just of money and belongings but of narrative.
My father believed in armed struggle.
There are two voices: the first says write; the second hardly speaks, but I know what he wants. And if I let him, nothing would get done. He hovers at the edges.
Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.
When you've been living in hope for a long time as I have, suddenly you realize that certainty is far more desirable than hope.
My parents were fairly laid-back, but there were certain things about which they were very strict. My brother and I were told never to turn away a person in need. And it didn't matter what we thought of their motives, whether they were truly in need or not.
I've always said - I've always said I'm not, by temperament, a romantic about revolutions or given to revolutions. I've always thought that they are not the ideal way to change.
I used to believe that it was not possible to lose someone I loved without sensing it somehow, without feeling something shift. But it's not true. People can die, sometimes the closest people to us, without us noticing a thing.
Great writing fills me with hopeful enthusiasm and never envy.
I hope and pray that I'll be one of those fortunate people who have many, many books to write. I don't begrudge writing. I love the whole thing!
It is evident that Qaddafi is mentally unwell. Like Richard III, he has barricaded himself within lies.
I've very aware of my rootlessness.
There's always a problem when you write, something you're trying to resolve, and sometimes a view can be inspiring.
To me, writing is like singing in the most inappropriate place, singing as beautifully as you can on a bus or in a bank, where people least expect it, and trying to get them to want to listen.
My best hope is that Libya turns into a peaceful, sensible country that has all the things my father and lots of others have been calling for: independence of the courts and press, a protected and democratic constitution, with different parties involved in a healthy and open debate.
Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides.
Throughout my entire life, I have lived in the shadow of the dictatorship. It denied me safety and security.
From my family alone, Qaddafi had imprisoned five men.
I admire Turgenev, Camus, Proust and Shakespeare, but I've also learnt a lot about writing from composers and artists.
I sometimes wonder if I would have become a writer if what happened to my father hadn't happened.
Living in hope is a really terrible thing.
I think my generation's inability to speak in absolute terms when it comes to politics is a very positive thing; it's made us more nuanced, made us more complex.
My family settled in Cairo in 1980. I was nine. I missed Libya terribly, but I also took to Cairo. I perfected the accent. People assumed I was Egyptian.
I used to be a keen rider. Sometimes I could sense what a horse liked or preferred to do.
I lost my father when I was 19, so the majority of my life has been under this cloud, and I have been full of the intention to find out what happened.
One of the dark truths about dictators - and it applies to Gaddafi - is that on some level, they love their people. But it is a strange love. It says, 'I love you for me; I don't love you for you.' That rhymes with a certain kind of Libyan father who was always certain about what was good for those around him. Those fathers lose in the end.
It is easy to underestimate the demands of an open heart.
The laws of the lowly gangster govern Qaddafi and his sons.
The romantic idea of the penniless writer is false. It's terrible. I hated being in debt. I hated the anxiety of not knowing whether we could pay our rent that month. Thankfully, I had a wife who was very supportive and had faith and shared my madness.
Making something of loss is, on some level, satisfying.
One of the reasons why Gadafy's dictatorship has managed to remain in power for so long is not just because it has shown itself to be able to exact a great deal of violence, both psychological and physical, on its people, but because it has been very successful at imposing a narrative, a story.
Architecture remains a passion and a subject I'm very interested in. I learned a great deal from studying it and working in it.
Being my father's son is a kind of privilege.
For an overwhelming majority of my life, my country has been a source of pain, fear, and embarrassment.
Audacity, hope, courage - the Libyans have these in abundance. But all those boring little things - like organization, building a committee - is hard; making decisions and moving ahead is hard.
I ultimately write for myself and the people I love.
There's something very bizarre about having a father who has disappeared. It's very hard to articulate.
Some of the most powerful memories are those when you are very, very young. Adult life is seen through the reflection of complex, rational thought.
I don't believe people are interested in dates and facts. I don't think it is interesting to say what it is to be this person or that, but I do believe it is entertaining and perhaps even of value to express how it is to be that person.
My father, the political dissident Jaballa Matar, disappeared from his home in Cairo in March 1990.
I've never been particularly interested in genre distinctions. They seem to me more useful to a librarian than to a writer.
When a dictatorship imprisons someone or makes them disappear, it's actually a very strategic move. We forget that. It's not as senseless as it seems. It's a way to silence someone, but also it's a way to silence their family as well, out of fear, and society by extension.
