Dinaw Mengestu Quotes

• Don't think about how your characters sound, but how they see. Watch the world through their eyes - study the extraordinary and the mundane through their particular perspective. Walk around the block with them, stroll the rooms they live in, figure out what objects on the cluttered dining room table they would inevitably stare at the longest, and then learn why.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Block, Writing, Character

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• Siempre son los primeros y los últimos pasos los más difíciles de dar. Nos alejamos e intentamos no volver atrás, o nos quedamos a las puertas, aterrorizados de encontrar lo que nos espera ahora que hemos vuelto. Entre medias, vamos dando tumbos a ciegas de un lugar y una vida a otra. Intentamos hacerlo lo mejor que podemos. Sin embargo, hay momentos como éste, en los que ni vamos ni venimos, y lo único que tenemos que hacer es sentarnos y echar la vista atrás a la vida que hemos hecho.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Reflection, Waiting, Trying

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• It's hard sometimes to remember why we do anything in the first place. It's nice to think there's a purpose, or even a real decision that turns everything in one direction, but that's not always true, is it? We just fall into our lives.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Real, Nice, Fall

  Dinaw Mengestu (2007). “The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears”, p.61, Penguin

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• We persist and linger longer than we think, leaving traces of ourselves wherever we go. If you take that away, then we all simply vanish.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Thinking, Leaving, Persist

  Dinaw Mengestu (2010). “How to Read the Air”, p.66, Penguin

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• La historia influye en nuestras vidas en todo momento. Nunca vivimos nuestras vidas de forma lineal. Siempre tenemos recuerdos e imágenes de nuestro pasado de los que a veces ni siquiera somos conscientes, y que en cierto modo conforman lo que somos.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Fashion, Memories, Past

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• I was always curious about the anxiety a person would feel when you open your mouth and you have an accent. You could have a Ph.D. or be a lawyer, but as soon as you say something, you may be diminished in the eyes of someone else.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Eye, Anxiety, Mouths

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• The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears is very much about America - it just happens to have African and Ethiopian characters, and in fact, it happens to have more characters who are not Ethiopian than who are.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Beautiful, Character, America

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• The imagined memories had to have as much weight as the real, or we had to at least pretend they did to such a degree that they just very well might have. And so I never questioned Angela about that particular story, or about all the troubling things that it pointed to, content to believe that at least in this version things worked for her better than they did in the one I never heard.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Memories, Real, Believe

  Dinaw Mengestu (2010). “How to Read the Air”, p.119, Penguin

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• The world around us is alive, he would have said, with our emotions and thoughts, and the space between any two people are charged with them all. He had learned early in his life that before any violent gesture there is a moment when the act is born, not as something that can be seen or felt, but by the change it precipitates in the air.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Air, Two, Space

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• At night my father often heard sporadic gunfire mixed in with the sound of dogs howling. If the war came closer, soon there would be only minor difference between shooting a dog and shooting a man.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Dog, Father, War

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• Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, the color of my skin and my rather peculiar background as an Ethiopian immigrant delineated the border of my life and friendships. I learned quickly how to stand alone.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Growing Up, Color, Skins

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• Hay quienes se levantan cada mañana para conquistar el día, y luego estamos quienes nos levantamos sólo porque tenemos que hacerlo. Vivimos a la sombra de cada barrio. Somos dueños de pequeñas tiendas de barrio, vivimos en apartamentos destartalados que reciben muy poca luz y caminamos por las mismas calles día tras día. Pasamos las tardes mirando perezosamente por las ventanas. Somos sonámbulos. Alguien lo dijo mejor: despertamos para dormir y dormimos para despertar.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Correr, Mañana, Dormir

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• I had lost too much of the heart and all the faith needed to stay afloat in a job where every human encounter felt like an anvil strung around my neck just when I thought I was nearing the shore.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Life, Jobs, Heart

  Dinaw Mengestu (2014). “All Our Names”, p.17, Knopf

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• Al principio no éramos luchadores. No éramos gritones ni lanzadores, aunque acabáramos siéndolo. Necesitaríamos tiempo y heridas mucho más profundas para llegar a ese punto.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Breakup, Point Break, Fighter

  Dinaw Mengestu (2010). “How to Read the Air”, p.53, Penguin

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• Mi madre nunca podría haber dicho que amaba el otoño, pero mientras bajaba las escaleras con la maleta en la mano hacia el Monte Carlo rojo en el que su marido llevaba esperando casi una hora, podría haber dicho que respetaba su lugar como mediador entre dos extremos. El otoño iba y venía, mientras que el invierno se soportaba y el verano se veneraba. El otoño era el reposo que hacía ambos posibles y soportables, y ahora ella estaba aquí con su marido a su lado, adentrándose en una tarde de principios de otoño con sólo una vaga idea de en quiénes se estaban convirtiendo y de lo que vendría después.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Summer, Mother, Husband

  Dinaw Mengestu (2010). “How to Read the Air”, p.16, Penguin

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• Personally, its a comfort and happiness to know that my work is taken seriously and is not marginalised and put in a box of ethnic immigrant writing in America.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Taken, Writing, America

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• Cuando yo era pequeño, Forest Park estaba lleno de familias integradas. Era increíble. Uno de mis mejores amigos era vietnamita. Otro era medio mexicano, medio negro. Otro era de Colombia. Otro había nacido en Estados Unidos, pero su madre era alemana y hablaba con acento alemán. Así que todos teníamos identidades múltiples.

  Dinaw Mengestu

  Mom, Growing Up, Mexican

  "Dinaw Mengestu on 'All Our Names'". Interview with Kevin Nance, www.chicagotribune.com. March 21, 2014.

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