People don’t want to treat their nannies subserviently. They don’t want to act like bosses. And so nobody quite knows how to behave, and everyone is slightly pretending that the mother and nanny are ‘equal’ – when that’s not the case. And pretending you are equal can make things complicated, even dangerous. Leila Slimani Read Quote
In Morocco, there is an insistence on authority. Children are not encouraged to speak up in front of their parents. My parents were not like this. I was the kind of girl who could tell her father, ‘No, what you are saying is totally untrue, and I don’t agree with you.’ Leila Slimani Read Quote
That animal part of us, it’s the most interesting part. It’s everything that has to do with drives, with things we can’t stop ourselves from doing, with all the spaces where we’re unable to reason with ourselves. It has its dark side, but there’s a luminous side, too, which is the fact that we’re just another species of animal. Leila Slimani Read Quote
Let’s stop hiding behind a pseudo-respect of cultures, in a sickening relativism that’s only a mask for our cowardice, our cynicism, and our powerlessness. I, born Muslim, Moroccan, and French, I will say it to you: Sharia makes me vomit. Leila Slimani Read Quote
Everyone asks me, ‘Why do you choose such subversive or shocking themes?’ but when I’m alone in my office, I’m not like, ‘OK I’m going to shock.’ I want to write about a character who fascinates me, someone who I don’t understand. Leila Slimani Read Quote
When I was a little girl and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I got older, I always used to say I want to be paid to think. So for me, to dream, to think, to write – it is wonderful. Leila Slimani Read Quote
I want to say that I can be Moroccan and speak about someone without speaking about his nationality. Because, you know, I have the feeling that when you come from Morocco, when you come from Afghanistan, when you come from Africa, Occidental people always wait for you to write a novel about identity. Leila Slimani Read Quote
It’s very important to say that French doesn’t belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian – who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world. Leila Slimani Read Quote
I don’t listen to music. I know it’s weird, and I have no explanation for that. But I never do. Leila Slimani Read Quote
