Zia Haider Rahman Quotes

Our interaction with our friends, for instance, is in large part an interaction with representations in our own head of the people before us. That's why a friend can surprise or disappoint us.

The twentieth century saw a professionalization of fiction writing, particularly in its second half and particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world - not so much mainland Europe, for example.

Experience belongs to the actor, but the story belongs to the teller. We write so we will never forget.

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.

Difficult questions can have simple answers.

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

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

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

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

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.

How many senators have taken their conception of what America can do from what they’ve seen on the American movie screen?

It is no consolation to reflect that every cause itself is an effect, making the search for causes and reasons a fool’s errand.

It’s always nice to learn a thing or two from a novel, don’t you think?

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

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

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

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

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.