Ayad Akhtar Quotes & Sayings

I feel like one of the things that is central to American life is the religious experience, and I think that the experience of being Muslim in America is as valid and as important a perspective on the religious experience of America as evangelical Christianity or Judaism - whatever it may be. — Ayad Akhtar

It's because you're different. You can't live life by rules others give you. In that way, you and I are the same. You have to find your own rules. All my life I've been running away from their rules, Hayat. All my life. You will be the same. — Ayad Akhtar

Sometimes I thought of Him as a cloud in the sky; ... sometimes as simply an enormous white light. Whatever the image, I would imagine Him close to me. And then I would wait, listening to my breath, until the silence came. And I would mutter: I give myself to You. — Ayad Akhtar

I can't be a spokesman for anything other than my own concerns. I have to be free to wrestle with my own preoccupations, and if I'm bringing any political awareness to that process, that mitigates my freedom. — Ayad Akhtar

I see the American experience as being defined by the immigrant paradigm of rupture and renewal: rupture with the old world, the old ways, and renewal of the self in a bright but difficult New World. — Ayad Akhtar

I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad. — Ayad Akhtar

Sooner or later we've all got to confront the reality that we have got to come to understand who we are and what we're doing, and the extent to which we are guided or manipulated by forces that are beyond our control. — Ayad Akhtar

I think that the thematic, formal history of the literary form ultimately harkens back to a different political system. That is to say, a feudal order: the aristocratic dispensation of leisure time, the refinements of the self. With the shift from feudal aristocracy to democracy there has been a long process of evolution. I think we're in the throes of a kind of steep, logarithmic shift, and I think that literary forms are losing their capacity to connect people to issues, to the experiences that feel most meaningful to them. — Ayad Akhtar

I started to understand that for me, art was no longer about self-expression but about creative engagement with the world. I started to respond in an excited way to making work inside an industry and not feeling the constraints of audience expectation as some kind of thing that I should avoid. — Ayad Akhtar

How can the rule matter when it is not true to the deeper intention? — Ayad Akhtar

I feel like that religions generally ask the biggest questions. They may not always have the best answers, but they're the zone of human activity that regularly asks the biggest questions. — Ayad Akhtar

Always imagine him close to you when you pray,' she explained. 'If you think of Him as near, then that's where you will find Him. And if you think of Him as far away, then that's where He will be. — Ayad Akhtar

One of the things that I have learned, one of the attainments of the long travails and tribulations, has been, I think, coming to a simpler sense of myself that I think correlates to a simpler sense of others. Something closer to what I now call the simple sense of being human, a sort of Wallace Stevens-esque formulation. I know that I can reach this in the audience, because when they start hearing a story, they wake up in this very clear, simple way. Almost like children. It's the same thing: a child asks, "What's going to happen next?" When they sense that a story is being told to them, they wake up. When they sense that it's not being told anymore, they lose interest. I take this very seriously, because the sacred trust that allows openness is the precondition of the kind of exchange I want to have, the kind of relationship that I want to have. I don't want to test that simple sense of being human. I don't want to transform it. — Ayad Akhtar

I consider myself to have been formed by a lot of the locutions and aesthetics and principles of the Muslim way of life, and those are an important part of my childhood and my identity. — Ayad Akhtar

Religion has been an important part of my understanding, my inquiry into what it means to be human. — Ayad Akhtar

The secret of a happy life is respect. Respect for yourself and respect for others. — Ayad Akhtar

I'm a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there's a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level. — Ayad Akhtar

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not. — Ayad Akhtar