A Quote by Leila Slimani

I am not patriotic or nationalistic, but the French language is like a country where I take refuge when I have nowhere else to go. It consoles me for everything. For me, the language no longer belongs to the colonialists.
I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.
I hate all that nonsense about not touching the colonialists' language. All that about it being corrupting and belonging to the master and making you Caliban. That thinking just denies you an outlet. You deny everything that is great from a language, whether it is Conrad or Shakespeare.
I don't believe in that country any longer. I'm not interested. I'm writing in the language, and I like the language.
The French no longer respect their language, because they no longer love themselves, and, no longer loving themselves, they no longer love what was the instrument of their glory - their language.
I am very interested in writers from the Francophone world. I like Kamel Daoud a lot, for example. In "The Meursault Investigation" and "Zabor," he shows a passion for the French language, a very special way of writing that belongs to those who live on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. It is language that connects us. It allows people there to cling to our history, our culture and sometimes also our values.
I think Americans are really patriotic people, so patriotism is something they can understand. I'm very patriotic about Brazil, my country, and that includes my language.
If I would want to have a huge audience, I would make American movies, not French movies, because there is a limit of course with French language. If I prefer to shoot in my own language, it is to play with my language, to play in my Paris, and I have complete freedom in France. It's so amazing. If American directors could imagine how free I am, they would have asked for political asylum immediately.
When Nigeria actually gave me the call-up I thought 'oh, it's going to be a challenge, I don't go back there a lot, I don't really speak the language.' I wasn't speaking the language as fluently as I am now, so it was always going to be a challenge, but it was a challenge I decided to take and change nationalities.
Do you have to make me feel like there's nothing left of me? You can take everything I have, you can break everything I am, like I am made of glass, like I am made of paper.Go on and try to tear me down I will be rising from the ground like a Skyscraper.
I love the French language... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk.
I do not use the language of my people. I can take liberties with certain themes which the Arabic language would not allow me to take.
Learn a language of another country and then you can go to that country: a place where the problems of your family will not follow. A language they do not speak.
All the academy will tell you that the language that is familiar to you is not appropriate. and that's not to say that there shouldn't be a standard, but when I come to school with my friends' language, my grandmother's language, the language in my mouth - you're going to tell me that's improper?
If French is no longer the language of a power, it can be the language of a counter power.
I just love France, I love French people, I love the French language, I love French food. I love their mentality. I just feel like it's me. I'm very French.
We believe we can also show that words do not have exactly the same psychic "weight" depending on whether they belong to the language of reverie or to the language of daylight life-to rested language or language under surveillance-to the language of natural poetry or to the language hammered out by authoritarian prosodies.
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