Quotes by Zia Haider Rahman

“Everyone, he continued, wants his life to stand for something other than what it would, which is about eighty years in the West, at any rate eighty years of working, eating, sleeping, shitting, b...”

“No sight better expresses the politics of aid, the dynamics of the West and the developing countries, than the image of children, happy or in need.”

“Everything new is on the rim of our view, in the darkness, below the horizon, so that nothing new is visible but in the light of what we know.”

“Then, as now, I believe that the English use language to hide what they mean.”

“Its always nice to learn a thing or two from a novel, dont you think?”

“At every stage, the world that breaks in through our senses struggles to find a footing in our brains. We might liken memories to the messages recorded on tape, but we mistake the message for the m...”

“It is no consolation to reflect that every cause itself is an effect, making the search for causes and reasons a fools errand.”

“How many senators have taken their conception of what America can do from what theyve seen on the American movie screen?”

“Zafar argues that the greatest influence on a writer may be on her psychic dispositions as a writer. Reading Philip Roth, writes Zafar, might clear the way of inhibitions that held you back from wr...”

“Thats another argument for writing: making something that outlasts you.”

“Since when did books ever solve anything? They only raise more questions than they answer, otherwise theyre just fucking entertainment, and I am not here to fucking entertain you.”

“Our choices are made, our will flexed, in the teeth of events that overwhelm us and devour us.”

“When evil enters the world, do you think it comes with horns and cloven feet, billowing some foul stench?”

“I wasnt as untrusting. I had faith in the goodness of people, the perfection of love.What happened?Everything ends. And its how they end that leaves the lasting effect.”

“Is that not the Promethean fable, that the fire stolen from the gods will light men their way even while it burns their hands?”

“Yes, they mean well, but the only good that an absence of malice guarantees is a clear conscience.”

“I am too much of an imitator to be a true writer.”

“An exile, said Zafar, is a refugee with a library.”

“Difficult questions can have simple answers.”

“That’s another argument for writing: making something that outlasts you.”