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"It sufficed that Nassar had fought Europe's two mightiest colonial powers simultaneously, plus Israel to boot, and come out of it alive. It helped, too, that he had displayed physical courage throughout the war. Reminding them of his experience in Palestine. " I'm here with you in Cairo. I'm not leaving. I'll never surrender but fight the enemy from house to house, village to village to the last drop of blood."

"As 1954 rolled into 1955, Nassar's takeover of Egypt was complete. It had been a busy two and a half years since the coup. Fourteen people had been executed, and a conservative estimate put the number of political prisoners at three thousand. Parliament was gone; the judiciary decapitated. The country that was just months earlier bore witness to a democratic" Renaissance " was now a political wasteland."

" A few months ago, they came and told me Nadja had gone mad. Following some eccentricities that she apparently engaged in in the corridors of her hotel, she had been committed to an insane asylum in the Vacluse."

" The main thing is that, for Nadja, I don't imagine there's much difference between the inside of an asylum and the outside. "

"So, he said, you want to take on the public subject, the big stuff. Democracy, fascism, history, ethics, revolution, God, mythology, the grand questions. You'll probably fail. Most public writers do."

" I always wrote out of deep unhappiness, and ever since I came to the College I have been happy, so writing has no longer felt necessary."