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Laila Lalami Quotes (1968-)
King, Novelist
About Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami (born 1968) is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor.
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“Better than the Moroccans themselves.”
“She had to do something for her future—today.”
“He needed someone to trustworthy to deal with Faten, and he knew Raouf would not let him down.”
“There’s a disconnect between how people imagine their families and how families are in real life.”
“She did not notice the fading afternoon light that lengthened the shadows behind her, framing her body like the arches of a shrine.”
“He warned me that trade would open the door to greed and greed was an inconsiderate guest; it would bring its evil relations with it. (p58)”
“I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them, and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it. (p8)”
“Nothing new has ever happened to a son of Adam, she said. Everything has already been lived and everything has already been told. If only we listened to the stories. (p52)”
“A name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing my ties to all those things too. (p5)”
“When you move into a new place, it does involve a refashioning of the self. We derive our sense of identity at least partly in relation to the landscape around us, in which we’ve grown up..…”
“He couldn't understand these foreigners. They could go to a nice hotel, have a clean bed, go to the beach or the pool, and here they were in the worst part of town, looking around for something exotic.”
“All of my books have focused on characters that are displaced and having to start over in some place new, and how the new landscape shapes the person you are and the person you become. (2019)”
“Somehow I had also convinced myself that my redemption could only come from some force outside of me-that if I were useful to others, they would save me. What a terrible thing to believe. I had to stop playing a part in my own misery. I had to save my own life. (p129)”
“I had been pushed further and further into a fate from which no escape or reprieve seemed possible. And so there came a moment when I stopped struggling, when I decided that I would cease making any more plans to return to the old days. I made up my mind to look upon the present as exactly what it was: it was all I had. (p232)”
“(What moves you most in a work of literature?) I’m moved by voices that ring so true that they make me feel kinship with characters who are completely different from me. As I get older, I also find myself moved by depictions of friendship and kindness, which are so much harder to execute convincingly on the page than cruelty or betrayal.”
What Laila Lalami Said About Others
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Laila Lalami on Zora Neale Hurston
““Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which I read for the first time only five years ago, and which made me fall in love with Zora Neale Hurston. I was knocked out by her eye for detail, her rigorous use of formal and vernacular languages and the depth of her narrative perspectives. Since then, I’ve read her stories and essays and found her throughout to be an independent thinker.”
About Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami (born 1968) is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor.