Quotes from Aleksandar Hemon

It was different in America: the incessant perpetuation of collective fantasies makes people crave the truth and nothing but the truth--reality is the fastest American commodity.

Only those who do not care, only those who find a way to diminish or extinguish the value of other human beings, survive wars without damage and speak of warrior honor afterward.

What you see is what you see, but that is never everything. Sarajavo is Sarajevo whatever you see or don't see. America is America. The past and future exist without you. And what you don't know about me is still my life. What I don't know about you is still your life. Nothing at all depends on you seeing it or not seeing it. I mean, who are you? You don't have to see or know everything.

Hi," she said, in a whispery voice, and nodded as if to confirm that she really meant it.

Right now, it didn't look good, the life. What doesn't kill you makes you horny.

It is so much easier to deal with the dead than with the living. The dead are out of the way, merely characters from stories about the past, never again unreadable, no misunderstandings possible, the pain coming from them stable and manageable. nor do you have to explain yourself to them, to justify the fact of your life.

Isabel's indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow.

Then everyone would retreat for a nap, after which we would have coffee and cake, sometimes an argument.

If you find yourself asking: How did I get here? Isador once said, that probably means you are living a life worth living.

I had an epiphany: I was a loser.

While he wanted to teach me what he knew, I wanted him to see what it all looked like for me—perhaps love is a process of finding a common vision of reality.

Before the war, the domain of culture seemed to offer a haven from the increasingly hateful world of politics. Now, when I hear the word culture, I pull out the quote commonly attributed to Hermann Goring: "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.

Nobody deserves death, yet everybody gets it.

Listening to Ella furiously and endlessly unfurl the yarns of the Mingus tales, I understood that the need to tell stories is deeply embedded in our minds, and inseparably entangled with the mechanisms that generate and absorb language. Narrative imagination--and therefore fiction--is a basic evolutionary tool of survival. We process the world by telling stories and produce human knowledge through our engagement with imagined selves.

I take picture because i like to look at the pictures I take. It seems to me that when people take a picture of something, they instantly forget about it. They can look at the picture and remind themselves.

You've never been married, so you don't know, but it is a fragile thing. Nothing ever goes away, everything stays inside it. It is a different reality.

She could slip out of her shoes and leave them right here, stuck in the muck, and then get rid of her dress and everything else: her mind, her life, her pain. The abandon of having nothing to lose, the freedom of being divested of all earthly burdens, ready for the Messiah, or death. Everything is attracted by its end.

And did the biblical Lazarus have a mother? What did she do when he was resurrected? Did he bid her good-bye before he returned to his undeath? Was he the same son to her undead as he was alive? I read that he sailed to Marseilles with his sisters afterward, where he may or may not have died again.

We stood there, squeezing each other's hands as though trying to press through the flesh to the bones and then beyond. She kissed my cheek and neck, and I felt the joy of omnipresent love -- everything around me speaking about me with affection, and Mary was listening.

The cafeteria in the Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital basement was the saddest place in the world—and forever it shall be—with its grim neon lights and gray tabletops and the diffuse foreboding of those who stepped away from suffering children to have a grilled cheese sandwich.

Znaš", zamišljeno je rekao Pronek, "mislim da gdje god ti je dom postoji i barica po kojoj znaš da li pada kiša." "Kako to misliš?" "Ono, kad pogledaš kroz prozor i ne znaš da li pada i onda pogledaš svoju baricu i onda znaš." "Da, znam. To je lepo." "Ja sam imao svoju baricu u Sarajevu, ispred ku?e.

Let me tell you a joke, Rora said. Mujo and his wife, Fata, are in bed. It's late at night. Mujo is falling asleep, and Fata is watching porn: a horny couple, all silicone and tattoos, is sucking and fucking like there is no tomorrow. Mujo says, C'mon, Fata, turn that off, let's go to sleep. And Fata says, Let me just see if these kids are going to get married in the end.

Let me tell you what the problem is, Brik. Even if you knew what you want to know, you would still know nothing. You ask questions, you want to know more, but no matter how much more I tell you, you will never know anything. That's the problem.

It was a great fucking time, the short era of disaster euphoria, for nothing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming cataclysm.