Laila Lalami Quotes

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.

I’m an immigrant myself. One of the things I’ve noticed over the years, when I do events, is that people will—not unkindly—suggest that I’m “doing well.” It’s something that’s always mystified me, as if there are different classes of immigrants, and the immigrants who “make it” work harder than those who don’t “make it.” As if success is entirely determined by an individual’s effort, irrespective of society’s structural inequities. I’ve always been very suspicious of that notion. It’s very dangerous. It’s an idea that I think makes people feel guilty when they’re not successful. Like if you’re poor, it’s your fault because you didn’t work hard enough…

There’s a disconnect between how people imagine their families and how families are in real life.

books hold so many memories of the times and places in which I’ve read them.

He needed someone to trustworthy to deal with Faten, and he knew Raouf would not let him down.

Better than the Moroccans themselves.

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)

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)

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)

We're so blinded by our love of the West that we're willing to give them our brightest instead of keeping them here where we need them.

But, he tried to tell himself, maybe this was just a fleeting interest, maybe it would all go away.

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)

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)

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..…