The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Zia Haider Rahman

Zia Haider Rahman

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 medium, or the other way round, for memory is the tape itself. When I listen to my memories now, I believe that all they tell me are the stories about themselves.

Zia Haider Rahman

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

Zia Haider Rahman

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

billowing, cloven-feet, evil, foul-stench

Zia Haider Rahman

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

authors, books, writers, writing

Zia Haider Rahman

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

authors, books, writers, writing

Zia Haider Rahman

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 writing about reckless desire, the temptations of power, and the immanence of rage, or reading Naipaul might convince you to seize the ego that so wants to be loved, drag it outside, put it up against a wall, and shoot it.

authors, ego, writers, writing

Zia Haider Rahman

Difficult questions can have simple answers.

answers, questions

Zia Haider Rahman

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

exile, library, refugee

Zia Haider Rahman

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

authors, writers-world, writing

Zia Haider Rahman

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

afghanistan, conscience, malice

Zia Haider Rahman

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

burns, fire, prometheus, stolen

Zia Haider Rahman

I wasn’t as untrusting. I had faith in the goodness of people, the perfection of love.What happened?Everything ends. And it’s how they end that leaves the lasting effect.

ends, faith, goodness, love, perfection