“ The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown,… Aleksandar Hemon
“ He drunkenly recognized that the lust was part of something bigger, of a craving to pursue pleasure unreasonably, beyond the right and wrong, to go as far as his body took him. In the body there is no… Aleksandar Hemon
“ I recognized him then; that is, I finally comprehended what I had known but had never been able to formulate: he had always been complete. He had finished the work of becoming himself, long before any… Aleksandar Hemon
“ One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling, that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation. Aleksandar Hemon
“ Only those who do not care, only those who find a way to diminish or extinguish the value of other human beings, survive wars without damage and speak of warrior honor afterward. Aleksandar Hemon
“ One of the most common platitudes we heard was that “words failed.” But words were not failing us at all. It was not true that there was no way to describe our experience. We had plenty of language to… Aleksandar Hemon
“ The cafeteria in the Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital basement was the saddest place in the world—and forever it shall be—with its grim neon lights and gray tabletops and the diffuse foreboding… Aleksandar Hemon
“ We wept within the moment that was dividing our life into before and after, whereby the before was forever foreclosed, while the after was spreading out, like an exploding twinkle-star, into a dark un… Aleksandar Hemon
“ While he wanted to teach me what he knew, I wanted him to see what it all looked like for me—perhaps love is a process of finding a common vision of reality. Aleksandar Hemon
“ I loved you because there was no other place for me to go. We were married because we did not know what else to do with each other. You never knew me, nothing about me, what died inside me, what lived… Aleksandar Hemon
“ It seemed that we loved each other better when there were large swaths of two continents between us. The daily work of love was often hard to perform at home. Aleksandar Hemon
“ All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is. Aleksandar Hemon
“ When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not. Aleksandar Hemon
