Leila Slimani Quotes
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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.'
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When you become a 'public person,' I find it very difficult to keep following social media. It is too harsh, too violent. I only read newspapers online.
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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.
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I just don't believe that a woman is naturally closer to her child than a man. Not at all.
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When you live closely with people, you don't see who they really are. In particular, with nannies, they only exist in your home, and when they leave, they don't really exist anymore for you.
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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.
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I don't listen to music. I know it's weird, and I have no explanation for that. But I never do.
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I think maternal instinct is a male construct that has been used for centuries to keep women in their place, at home.
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I, too, am interested in identity and Islam, which is what people expect of us. But one must not write what is expected. It's important for North African writers to show they have other things to say.
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People are not born evil, although we all have evil within us.
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Human darkness fascinates me; I find it intriguing. And there are few female characters who are explored in this light.
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You have to fight against all the things that will keep you out of writing, because life doesn't go with writing. You will always have something more important to do: you will have to take your children to school, you will have to cook something, you have to meet friends. But you have to fight if you want to write.
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I remember, when I was a teenager, people telling me, 'You know, when you are a mother, you will never feel lonely. You will feel so much love, and you will be fulfilled by this love.' Then I became a mother. And I learnt that is absolutely wrong: you can feel very lonely with your children, even if you love them.
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Authors have a nationality; books do not.
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When I was a little girl, my first link to the world was as a reader. Sometimes, I feel a nostalgia for those times, for all the emotions I felt as a child - discovering novels, discovering Dickens, Balzac, or Dostoevsky. I wanted to be like those men.
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'Lullaby' is about boundaries.
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You want your children to love the nanny, but at the same time, you want to stay the mother, and you want to be the most-loved. So there is a sort of jealousy between the mother and the nanny.
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I knew I wanted to write about a nanny, but it was difficult for me to find a narrative rhythm.
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I am not afraid of being a pariah.
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The only way you can know someone is through their actions - you can never know what's going on inside them.
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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.
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I remember that the first time I looked at my son, of course I felt love. But I think the first feeling was not love: it was fear. Someone is needing me. If something happens to him, what am I going to do? Maybe I won't survive if something happens to him? The fear was as big as the love.
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My parents were lovers of books, and they raised us in a manner that viewed freedom and subversion as indispensable.
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A mother should never be blamed for working.