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

I am for polyphony: there can be many, many different languages. Considering all these current divisions between ethnicities and religions, it’s madness to have a state, and I really don’t understand the joy in forcing people together.

I only write fiction in Arabic because this language is a witch—an amazing, funny, crazy, generous, and forgiving witch. It has allowed me everything. It is the space of the most intimate freedom I have ever experienced in my life.

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