Aleksandar Hemon Literature Quotations

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

It's not that war crimes stop as soon as a novel about them is published. Literature operates slowly, it is always inching toward bliss, never quite getting there.

I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.

Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

I started appreciating and valuing different things. Some things just became insufferable to me, and not just literature. I used to like horror movies and now I couldn't stand them.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.