When I was a child, I was reading books filled with people different from me, all French, all foreigners. There was a sense of disconnect between my …

- Laila Lalami

Thing that was very different for me is that an American child's reading is filled with Americans.

- Laila Lalami

Every book leaves its mark on you. It might leave you hungry for that kind of book or you may be satiated, and you're eager to read something else. I…

- Laila Lalami

I read "The Conquest of New Spain" by Bernal Diz Del Castillo, which I recommend to a lot of people. He was an eyewitness of [Hernando] Cortez's conq…

- Laila Lalami

A name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing…

- Laila Lalami

I [read] "The Book of Unknown Americans," which is by a friend of mine, Cristina Henriquez, and is about two Latino, immigrant families who live in D…

- Laila Lalami

No one wrote better about the sin of pride, the corruption of power and the redemption of love. I will miss you, Gabriel García Márquez.

- Laila Lalami

Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present.

- Laila Lalami

In some ways, I think it's the closest that we come to the truth — is in the form of fiction.

- Laila Lalami