Hisham Matar quotes

Architecture remains a passion and a subject I'm very interested in. I learned a great deal from studying it and working in it.

All great art allows us this: a glimpse across the limits of our self.

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.

Grenfell, the building set on fire with the help of its own face, is a scene of a complex injustice: one that is moral, economic, political, and aesthetic. Not only was the cladding unsafe, it was ugly; not only was it ugly, it was untrue both to the architecture of the building it covered and untrue to its responsibility to human safety.

Like most dictators, Col Gaddafi detests the metropolis. His vision of Libya is a kind of Bedouin romantic medievalism, suspicious of universities, theatres, galleries and cafes, and so monitors the cities' inhabitants with paranoid suspicion.

Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.

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.