Quotes from Leila Slimani

People don't want to treat their nannies subserviently. They don't want to act like bosses. And so nobody quite knows how to behave, and everyone is slightly pretending that the mother and nanny are 'equal' - when that's not the case. And pretending you are equal can make things complicated, even dangerous.

All fiction is based on truth - 'Madame Bovary' is based on a true story!

That animal part of us, it's the most interesting part. It's everything that has to do with drives, with things we can't stop ourselves from doing, with all the spaces where we're unable to reason with ourselves. It has its dark side, but there's a luminous side, too, which is the fact that we're just another species of animal.

I don't really consider myself an immigrant, because I was born French; I have always spoken the language. I never had the feeling of being a foreigner. I was very lucky: I came to France, and I had enough money to study and to rent a studio. So, for me, it was not difficult.

One of the big mistakes of the Moroccan elite and the elite in the Muslim world was to be afraid of the conservatives. They are fighting for their ideas. Why shouldn't we fight for our ideas?

I had a nanny growing up in Morocco, and my parents encouraged me to put myself in her shoes sometimes.

I knew I wanted to write about a nanny, but it was difficult for me to find a narrative rhythm.

Authors have a nationality; books do not.

I remember that the first time I looked at my son, of course I felt love. But I think the first feeling was not love: it was fear. Someone is needing me. If something happens to him, what am I going to do? Maybe I won't survive if something happens to him? The fear was as big as the love.

When I was a little girl, my first link to the world was as a reader. Sometimes, I feel a nostalgia for those times, for all the emotions I felt as a child - discovering novels, discovering Dickens, Balzac, or Dostoevsky. I wanted to be like those men.

In Morocco, there is an insistence on authority. Children are not encouraged to speak up in front of their parents. My parents were not like this. I was the kind of girl who could tell her father, 'No, what you are saying is totally untrue, and I don't agree with you.'

I am not afraid of being a pariah.

Authorities in Rabat believe that if we create a Moroccan character, even in a work of fiction, we are responsible for the image of Moroccan women.

My parents were lovers of books, and they raised us in a manner that viewed freedom and subversion as indispensable.

When you become a 'public person,' I find it very difficult to keep following social media. It is too harsh, too violent. I only read newspapers online.

When I was a little girl and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I got older, I always used to say I want to be paid to think. So for me, to dream, to think, to write - it is wonderful.