People may gain from literature what they cannot get from their own lives. It’s not escapism but rather a kind of openness. - Adania Shibli

Once my engagement with any text as a writer finishes, and it's finally published or appears in book form, I never return to it as a reader. I do not know why the idea of reading my own published texts repulses me, but I know that reading books written by others is a lifeline.

It is within such structures that I feel a grand narrative can exist, like a dictatorship—solid, like the worst tyrant.

Differences between people are used to commit injustice—that was an early lesson about racism.