Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile's life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.


The Edward Said Reader (ed. Vintage, 2007) - ISBN: 9780307428493

Edward Said Quotes

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place,...

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place,...

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place,...

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place,...