Leïla Slimani

33:05Go and invent yourself. Find who you are day by day. And at that time, I thought it was very violent. Because when you're young, that's not what you want. When you're young, you want to belong. And you want to have an identity. and you want to have like boundaries and to understand in which side you are. But now that I have the age that I have, I understand what he meant and I understand that it was a great gesture of love. Yeah. To be able to prefer the freedom of your children than to have them with you. and he prepared all his life to let us go away. And my father couldn't travel. He didn't have a passport.

33:57So he knew it would be impossible for him to visit us, to come to our wedding or to meet our children unless we would come to Morocco. So I think it was heartbreaking for him and humiliating also to say to your children, you have to live your country, my country, to be happier, but that's what he did. He preferred our freedom to our roots. It's really kind of drastic, isn't it? I mean, did you find that having that freedom or being told to go, you know, that you could be free was quite daunting really and quite unsettling? Because also as a young person, we need things to push back against. That's how we establish what freedom means to oneself and, you know, what is personal freedom.

34:59Absolutely. Yeah. And when I arrived in France, I was so young. And it was wonderful because I could do anything. I was in this big, beautiful city all by myself, 17 years old. And, you know, it was Paris, people kissing in the streets, which was so weird for me. And I mean, French kissing, not just kissing. And, you know, in Morocco, people don't show their feelings or their sexuality. People mask a lot, those kind of things. and the idea of being in a city of visibility where you don't feel ashamed all the time. There is not this concept of Hsouma that we have in Moroccan culture. And so I had to adapt.

35:47But it was very difficult also because being free is difficult. Yeah. And it comes with a lot of loneliness and a lot of failures. and sometimes you get manipulated by people and sometimes, you know, some people they can smell that you're alone and that you're free and that you don't know where are the boundaries. So they will try to instrumentalize this freedom to make you do things you don't want to do. But I have no regret. I think that freedom comes with that also. and that you have to learn. You have to fail and fail again and fail better all the time. I know. It's an amazing gift. It's a huge burden, but at least it's a responsibility to figure out that if you can do it, it makes you strong.

36:51Yeah, and I have a lot of young writers coming to me and saying, you know, I'm afraid I want to write and I want to write about my life my life and about my parents and I know it's going to be difficult. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to lie to you. It's going to be difficult. And being free, being a free writer and being a free woman, I hate the idea of going in front of an audience and say, oh, you know, I'm a free woman and it's so wonderful and look at me. No, it's difficult. It's very difficult. And you have to make also a lot of sacrifice, but it's worth it. And that's what I say to those women.

37:29It's difficult. Some people are not going to like you. Some people in your family are not going to understand you. You're going to be judged and probably very lonely also sometimes. But it's worth it. So worth it. Because your father was falsely implicated in a financial scandal which devastated him and your whole family. And he was exonerated after his death. but you said you couldn't have written your first book if he'd been alive. And it's a sort of strange way to be freed from opinion. And I felt that my father's parting gift to me when he died was to free me from his opinion, which mattered so much to me.

38:16Did you find that? Absolutely. And I think it's a paradox, but when people you love very, very, very much die, there's, of course, a lot of pain, but there's also a certain relief. As if you were free from all this pressure that comes from this love and from the judgment or the opinion you think this person has on you. And my father was so important in my life, not only as my father, but also as the incarnation of my Moroccan identity of certain tradition. And I think I would not have been able to be the writer I am if he was still alive. and also the fact that he suffered so much and the fact that he endured so much injustice made me very, very angry.

39:20And I felt that he was dead, but he was still here. And my real conversation with my father began after his death. And I don't think that death is the end of a relationship. it's just shifting it's different but I talk to him and I think I know him and I love him more now than before and there are a lot of things that I understand now that I didn't understand before and you know it's strange but I always feel that he's protecting me that he's here if I have a problem or someone want to harm me, I always feel that he's here. And I want revenge. I want revenge. And I want to clear his name. And my father wanted to be an artist.

40:15He wanted to be a writer. And he wanted so many things. And he was the kind of person who lived with a lot of regrets. You know, the kind of person who always think of all the roads he could have taken and did not take. My mother is completely different. My mother is, okay, I take one road, I make one choice, and I never think again about the one I didn't. So my father was, of course, unhappy because you're always unhappy when you're not able to renounce. Yeah, yeah. And so I think I wanted also to be a writer for him, and I wanted him also to be a character. He's a character in my books. Yeah.

40:56And so now he will never die. Yeah. He's immortal and he's more intense and bigger than in real life. And that's my gift to him because I think that's what he had wanted all his life. He wanted to be the character of a novel. Yeah. God, that's such a wonderful thing to be able to do. My shrink says phobias are what we create to attach our fears to. And I wondered if you have any phobias. I have so many. You know, I'm very, when I was young, I was afraid of everything. I don't know why, but I was always afraid of being attacked. I was afraid. I think it's because of my education. My mother was very, very protective and afraid of everything.

41:46And as a young girl, you know, we were raised with the idea of danger. My mother would say, you know, you could get, you could be raped. you can get pregnant. Even being in love was dangerous because for my mother, if you are in love, you're not going to focus on your study and you're going to fail. So everything was dangerous. And I remember that's ridiculous. But when I had to come to Paris the months before I was in Morocco and I was thinking, oh my God, I will live in this big city that I don't know. I will I do to prevent attacks or people who are going to assault me. And I was thinking I'm going to disguise as a nun because no one could.

42:32No, really, I was so stupid. I was 16 or 17 years old. And I was thinking, okay, I will find an outfit as a nun because then I will look so innocent that no one would like to do something to me. And for many, many years, you know, I was so afraid of getting out at night. And you know something that I thought the other day? Sometimes I would go with a guy just because I was too afraid to go at home because I couldn't afford a taxi, a cab. And so I would accept to spend the night with someone I didn't really like. And that's how I thought, okay, that's why my mother told me also that financial independence is so important because just being able to pay for a cab is because we are afraid.

43:24We are afraid in the streets alone. So I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid of being attacked. I'm afraid of rats very much. And I'm afraid of stairs. I have a big phobia of stairs. I have this portion where I always think that I'm going to fail and that I'm going to break all my teeth. I have this feeling all the time. So I hate stairs. I always try to take elevators because I'm really afraid of stairs. Any idea why stairs? It's quite a niche phobia. I don't know. I'm afraid of falling probably. And, you know, my father had a big falling in his life. And I always had the, yeah, not the intuition, but I always thought that I was going to fool myself.

44:16Yeah. That because now I had this success and I climbed the stair, that of course I'm going to fool, that I'm going to be punished. So that's probably why I'm so afraid of stairs. But it's really something horrible because I have to grab, you know, the ramp, I don't know how to say in English. because I always feel that I'm going to fail. Yeah, there's a lot of little staves in Paris as well. Very much. And that's why I was living in Montmartre, so can you imagine? It's horrible. Because you talked about the freedom and the loneliness in Paris, and I always find Paris a very lonely place. And I wondered, do you have any codes or rituals that you've invented for yourself to kind of place yourself.

45:07Yeah, it's a very lonely place, but that's also the charm of Paris. What I love with Paris, it's a city that I can, you know, sometimes I will put makeup and wear some clothes, not for people, but for Paris. Paris is such a beautiful stage. I'm like, I'm going to get beautiful for you, for you, for Paris. and I love that and I do that very often when I'm in Paris and I will take some time in the morning and I just like to walk on the quay and then Saint-Germain-des-Prés and walk like this and it's one of the rarest cities in the world where you feel it's not useless or stupid or absurd just to get dressed for the city and people look at you in Paris.

45:59You know I live in Lisbon now and In Lisbon, people don't stare at each other. People are very discreet, and it's something that would not be very polite. But in Paris, even in the subway, people look at you from the head to the toes, like, what do you wear? Okay, and now I understand by how you're dressed, who you are, or what kind of message you're trying to say. So I love that very much in Paris, that you can be very lonely, but at the same time, you're on a stage, and this stage is welcoming you, and you have sort of silent relationship with passers-by. And it's really beautiful. Once you understand it and once you master it, it's really beautiful.

46:48You can spend hours in a park in Luxembourg or on a terrace just looking at people and looking at people looking at you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I like the way it's so kind of transactional, the exchange of looks. And I remember once going into Chave to see if I could. Oh, I love Chave. I know, to see if I could afford to buy like some tiny thing. And I saw the way they looked at me, like, forget it, don't waste your time with her. And then suddenly the woman noticed my ring. So I've got this fantastic diamond ring and she completely changed. Everything changed. It was, and I realized the agency of, I mean, obviously it's fantastic to have a ring like this, But I don't notice it.

47:42And I don't know if in England people, they don't see the opportunity for an exchange a lot of the time. And I really enjoyed that. It made me laugh. But that's also why you can feel very lonely in Paris. Because when you don't understand, when you're not fashionable, you feel. And that's something that I have a lot of empathy sometimes for tourists or, you know, because they try to dress as Parisian. You can see that at the Sacré-Cœur. They dress very well. And it's so beautiful and so touching to see that. And obviously now with certain TV shows and Emily in Paris and all this, there's a big trend of wearing a beret and all this.

48:33I love that. It's very touching. I think it's beautiful to see that. It has to do with what I said before, the desire to belong and the desire to be in. But in Paris, it's very, very difficult to be in. And it takes years and years and years for people to welcome you. It's very difficult and it's quite a cruel city. I think it's not a myth, but it's quite a cruel city when it comes to appearance and to fashion. People can be very judgmental. And there is also a lot of irony. They love to make fun of each other, which is nice because I love the French sense of humor. I love it. But sometimes it's also very, very posh and very cruel.

49:26because you met your future husband in a bar and he came up to you and asked for your number and you said i'm not giving it to you but i'll meet you three days from now at eight o 'clock in front of the saint germain church and uh was that a test and do you always need a test in order to trust you know it was not a test for him it was a test for me yeah because um if he had my number I just have to answer text and this and that, and I can lie and say I'm not available. But if we have this rendezvous, I have to figure it out with myself. Do I really want to go there or I don't? And if I don't, I will probably never meet him again.

50:13So I'm the one who have to really think about it. That's not to test him because I was sure he would come. But it was to test me. And honestly, I hesitate for hours. And then he was very funny. And he looks exactly like Yves Saint Laurent. He's the sosie of Yves Saint Laurent. And it's really, really, it's amazing. So amazing that one day we were in a restaurant and Pierre Berger came to us. And he said, I can't have dinner here because you look too much like Yves. So I was fascinated by his looks. He was very elegant and he has long hair and the same glasses as Yves Saint Laurent. He was really different from and very long hands, quite feminine also.

51:04And he was very, very chic. So I wanted to meet this man who didn't have the code of the, you know, the virilist or masculine code. I liked that and the fact that he had a great sense of humor. So I arrived at the church at maybe 7.30 or 7.40, and he arrived at 8, and I said, you're late. Never be late again. And he said, no, you said 8. I said, but you should have been waiting for me. And so I was really, really rude to him that night, but he kept laughing, and I was like, okay, I think he's maybe the one who can handle someone like you. Yeah, that's so good. He wasn't fazed by your regulation.

51:49No, and, you know, my father died just a few months before, and his mother died also. And we spent the whole night making jokes about cancer and about death. And we were, you know, testing how far will she go, how far will he go in terms of black humor. And I loved that he was able to laugh about very sad things. And that's something that I like with people that are very close to me, that I don't like people who are like deadly serious. I think that's, and that's the title of my book, I think you have to take the fire. Of course, people die and house burn and things disappear and your childhood is far away and you will never go back.

52:37But you take the fire and you move forward and you try to laugh during this journey and to make fun of yourself and to make fun of the situation. I'm not the kind of person who tries to dwell on disaster or tragedy because probably writing also helped me for that because writing is about irony, about taking a certain distance with reality. because in your book I'll take the father the father Mehdi he cuts up all his ties in a frenzy of despair and fury and it was such a striking image of the ties and I wondered if ties had any particular association for you yes because that's really an accessory that I hate I hate ties for men for women I don't care I think it's beautiful, but for men, I hate that.

53:38And, you know, during colonization in French tribunal, men were forced, Moroccan men were forced to wear a tie. And when they would arrive, for instance, their son was arrested because he was an activist, there was always a man in the streets buying ties. And it was a gesture of humiliation also, forcing men to put a tie on the djellaba because you have to act serious and you have to act Western. And I always had this vision also of the, how do you say in English, the pendu, you know, this idea of strangulation. Yeah. And my father every day would put this tie. And for me, it was a sign of domination, being in the system, accepting something.

54:33And when you think about it, the accessory is quite absurd. Why do you do this and put this thing here on your shirt? So when he lost his job, he spent like 10 years at home doing nothing except reading and drinking. And I had this idea. It didn't happen in real life. But I was thinking, okay, if you imagine him one day just having to dress and looking at all these ties and understanding that he will never wear them again. Yeah. And looking at this thing, you know, like hanging and so absurd. And that's how I had this idea. But it's really an accessory that I don't like. And I'm so happy that my husband is not wearing ties.

55:20because Yves Saint Laurent wore some beautiful ties but then he had these wonderful open shirts so maybe he follows that look more because you have a composure and a self-contained demeanor and is there an overt place in your dress code that you like to show another aspect of yourself? You know, my wardrobe is not very coherent when I think about it. And I'm not happy about it. I would like it to be very coherent. And I dream of like to have beautiful trousers and very chic shirts. But it's not like this. I have multiple personas and multiple ways of dressing. I love colors also. And I used to wear a lot of very lively colors, a lot of pink and red.

56:20especially when I arrived in Europe because everyone was wearing gray and black. And I thought that the winter was so sad that I loved wearing colors because it reminded me probably of Morocco. But, yeah, I love, you know, I love knits very much. I have a lot of knits everywhere, which is, I think, now at my age, maybe becoming a little bit ridiculous. and so I'm going to keep them for my daughter. And now I'm trying to change a lot of things in my world, but there are a lot of clothes that I feel I can't wear anymore. And I'm very excited at the idea of seeing my daughter wear them and maybe my granddaughter wear them because it was the same with my mother.

57:13I still have some jeans that my mother would wear in the 70s And I have an Afghan coat that she bought when she was a student. And I love that also, you know, the legacy, the transmission. And I think it's very important to still have this desire to buy clothes and to look beautiful. You know, my grandmother, when she was 90 years old, I remember I was with her and she was a very old woman. And she was living in a farm. So, I mean, she didn't have to be very fancy, but she loved to buy clothes. And my grandfather was dead. My grandfather, who used to make fun of her because he thought she was too frivolous.

57:56And at the age of 90, I remember that she fell in love with a coat, a very beautiful cashmere coat with floral lining. And she bought it and she showed it to me. And it was still wrapped in the tissue paper. And she was so happy. really like a young girl. And I remember thinking, oh, if she can feel that, it means that she still has this desire to live. Yeah. She still has this zest for life. If at the age of 90, she's so excited by buying a coat. Because I was wondering, because you are very elegant, I mean, you have a great elegance about you. Are there any kind of slightly secret fetishy places where your taste goes into a less chic?

58:50Like I always find I can go there with my shoes. I can wear like spiky heels with patent leather, but I'd never like dress sexy because I couldn't handle it. No, sexy me neither. Never.

59:10I can sometimes be a little bit eccentric. For instance, I have an obsession for Santiago shoes, which is weird. Look at that. And I love country music. I don't know why. And I love all the cowboy outfits. That's interesting. I don't know where it comes from. So I have pairs of Santiago, but like Sartore Santiago that I like very much. I love shoes. My favorite shoes are church shoes. Oh, yeah. Each time I publish a book, I would buy a pair of church. So I have nine pairs of church that I love very, very much. And that's one of my favorite things. And I love clothes that last for a long time, that you can wear for a very long time.

59:59I love also, I don't know how to say in English, I say maybe bombers. Oh, yeah, bomber jackets. Yeah, I love that very much because I live in Portugal. And in Portugal, like in Morocco, the weather is, it's always like 20 degrees. So I don't need to wear a very hot coat. And so I love this kind of outfit. But as I told you, I travel a lot and I'm like a turtle, you know, with my house on my back. So I try also to buy clothes that I could wear anywhere for many different weather, different circumstance. And that's something that I really appreciate with clothes when you can mix. I love trousers that you can wear with a shirt, but also with something a little more sexy and with a T-shirt.

1:00:55So that's what I like with clothes. Because you've talked about writing for revenge and revenge against the misjustice enacted on your family and the way people withdrew. drew. Also, you talked about when you quit your job to write your first book and your boss kept insisting you wanted to spend time with your baby. And revenge is a very male-dominated territory, and people don't want women to want revenge. And how do you handle using that word? You know, of course they don't want, because the whole society and the whole world, for many, many years, for thousands of years, was built on the idea that women will forgive.

1:01:38Can you imagine how the world would have been if we didn't forgive? There was always this expectation that we will forgive. And all the religions are based on this also. You will forgive and you will accept and you will accept that they will beat you on the other cheek. And now I'm adapting a text by Tolstoy, the last novel of Tolstoy called Resurrection. And it's the story of a woman who doesn't want to forgive. And reading that, that was really liberating. Because I understood also that the patriarchy was built on that, on this idea that women are made and females are made to forgive. that we are so compassionate.

1:02:31And the other day I said on a TV show that I wanted to revenge and that I thought it was important for women to not forgive all the time. And I had a lot of backlash. People hated me for that. And they said, oh, we are not like this. It's not a good image that you're giving of Morocco and that you're giving of women. women in our culture are forgiving and they are sweet and they are docile. And I'm like, but I don't want to be sweet and docile. And I don't want to forgive my tormentors. And I want revenge or I want justice if it's not revenge. And I think that what they don't understand is they think revenge in a very vulgar and stupid way that I'm just trying to kill my or being violent.

1:03:24No, it's not that I want revenge towards them, but I want to find my way of expressing the fact that I am angry and that I don't accept this situation. For me, revenge was writing, but revenge can be also dressing, you know, like the revenge dress. You're very angry against someone and you want to arrive in a party and you're wearing this beautiful dress out of revenge. And I think this gesture is beautiful. I would never judge that. I think it's too easy and too manipulative to always expect from women, and not only from women, but from the people in general and from lower social class, but they will forgive and they will accept and they are religious and all this, it's very dangerous and we should be wary of the use, the political use of forgiveness.

1:04:23Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Because you're so clear about the excitement of danger and being afraid and you say there's a monster in all of us and that you love monsters and I wonder, do you have a favorite monster? Do I have a favorite monster? You know, I think my favorite monsters are artists, some artists who are monsters. I think that Truman Capote was a monster. Andy Warhol was probably a monster. Flannery O 'Connor, in her way, was also a monster. A monster because so different and wanting also to show your difference, not being ashamed of being different. I think that's what makes you a monster.

1:05:14But I don't like when people talk of monsters like animals, you know, saying he's a monster, he's a pig, he's a dog. Yeah. Because monsters are human and monsters are just like us. And I think that's why it's very important to tell the story of monsters. You know, there was a very famous serial killer in France in the 90s called Guy Georges. and for the first time his lawyer was a woman. It was the first time in France that a female lawyer defended a serial killer and she was really, really criticized by the press and by a lot of people saying how dare you defend a man who killed women and raped women and he's a monster.

1:06:00And she said this very beautiful thing. She said, but even monsters has a story and he has the right to tell his stories. And that's something that I defend. And that's, you know, the other side of what I was saying about revenge. I think that literature can be a tool for revenge, but it's mostly a tool that can do justice to people. In real life, it's very difficult to understand each other. Life is made of so many misunderstandings. But through books, as a reader and as a writer, you can go inside the head of someone, inside his soul, and you can be very, very close to all his contradiction.

1:06:45And maybe you can understand something, you can understand contradiction, and you can feel this kind of empathy and of tenderness that is very difficult to feel in real life because we were so busy and everything so fast. But you can do justice to people that are maybe invisible or violent or things like that. It's more complicated in books. So books are a lot for me about repairing injustice. Yeah, yeah. Justice seems to be the key. And you're a writer and an intellectual. And Zadie Smith said, it's weird how people think it's antithetical that you can be clever and beautiful. And I read that a male literary editor advised you not to attend a Chanel fashion show.

1:07:40One of the great joys of life is being interested in everything, including clothes, which are a great shield and also a sword. And why do you think he had a problem with that? Because, you know, there is this idea that you shouldn't, as an intellectual, look frivolous. And that you should not need to wear makeup or beautiful clothes because you're interested in more important things. But I absolutely do not agree with that. First, because I think it's very misogynist. Yes.

1:08:46I love fashion very much and I'm very much interested in it. And a few weeks ago, I was reading the biography of Christian Dior because, as you said, I collaborate a lot with Dior that I love very much. And I thought that there were so many things in common between the work of a fashion designer and of a writer. Really? The necessity of being so focused on little details, you know, on a pocket, on a drape, like a writer is obsessed by a coma, by a sentence. And you spend so much time alone thinking about this. The fact also, you know, that fashion designer, when in winter, they have to think about summer.

1:09:33and they have to think about what women in six months will want to wear. So like writers, they have to step outside of themselves and they have to travel in time. And I think there are so many things in common, this idea of obsession. Christian Dorsey, I'm obsessed by dress. All my life is dresses, dresses, dresses. And I could say the same. All my life is books, books, books. And all my life is women. I write about women all the time. So as I'm very wary about people telling you that you should forgive, I'm very wary about people who judge frivolity. I think it's very important to be frivolous.

1:10:18That frivolity is also a way to resist, to resist tragedy and drama and all the sad things that happen in life. It's a tool for dignity to be also frivolous. And my mother, even when my father was in prison, when she was suffering so much and everyone excluded her from Moroccan society, she was always beautiful. And she would always take care of herself. I never saw my mother in her pyjama or, you know, not wearing makeup or not going to the hairdresser. And I admired that very much. I never thought she's frivolous. I thought, oh, my God, how proud she is. And how dignified she is. So, no, I really don't think that intellectual women should listen to that kind of crap.

1:11:12And actually, I don't care about people judging me for liking to wear Dior or things like this. Also, fashion isn't frivolous. It's a very serious thing. It's a tool as much as anything else is. So it's such a short-sighted approach. It's ludicrous. Yeah, and it's about legacy also and transmission and heritage. And that's also what I like. You know, it's the whole story of women, the story of our body, the story of, you know, when I was reading the biography, when he talks about the new look, for instance, just after the war, where women suffered so much, this idea of reinventing femininity and giving women again a certain sense of beauty, of frivolity.

1:12:05And, you know, women wearing those very beautiful dresses from the New Look were attacked in the street because people would say it's indecent and you should not wear this. The war just finished. And it makes me think, you know, actually of conservative and Islamist looking at you and saying you should not wear this. It's indecent. So I hate that. And for me, also wearing what I want to wear and being very self-conscious about style is also a way to resist those conservatives who were very, very hard on me and always judging me. It's a way to protect me. You know, when I go to a TV show with intellectuals or when I'm doing like my diplomatic work, honestly, when I feel confident about my look, it helps me very much.

1:13:01Because very often I'm surrounded by men. There's always like 70, 80 % of men. And I know that it counts. I know that the way I look will influence how they will listen to me. Yeah. And will influence how they will decide where I sit during the meeting. So it's also a tool and something that empowers me. Yeah. Because I know that they will be impressed if I know how I look and if I'm confident. Mm-hmm. And if you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction? No, no, actually, I'm like, oh, you made a mistake. It's not that nice. But on the contrary, I think that it provokes a lot of empathy.

1:13:56You know, I don't really, I don't feel this kind of tenderness with people who are too well-dressed. Actually, that's the opposite. I can feel a certain, I don't know, I don't really like now people who are very, very, very fashionable. when you can really see that, okay, this shirt and this jeans and this shoes and the bag, everything was chosen and it's too much. It's too beautiful. Yeah. I like the faute de goût. Yeah. I think it's very important. Even in a house, I think that a beautiful house is a house where there are some things that are kitsch or you need a faute de goût because when it's too beautiful, it doesn't work.

1:14:41So I like when someone is dressed nice and there's like a jewelry that looks weird or something like that. I feel that it's alive, that it comes from somewhere. And today, I have to be honest, I'm not on social media, but when I see magazines or sometimes I feel that some actress or some, it's too beautiful. It's too perfect. And I like imperfections. I think that's what makes it very special. And the title of your final book in the trilogy, Country of Others, is called I'll Take the Fire. And it's a quote from Jean Cocteau about what you'd take if the house is burning down. And it's pretty hardcore.

1:15:27Would you still take the fire? Is that the key to you? Of course. Of course. I would take the fire. I love this because it's so much panache. And, yeah, because what else could I do? Look at the fire burning my house, cry, and take the ashes and put them on my head? No, that's not the point. But fire is something. Fire can heat you and fire can protect you. So fire is something. It's Promethean. It's a power. So, yes, it destroys, but it also protects. It's also warm. it also, so things are, there's always two ways of looking at things. So I'd rather take the fire and move forward. And I think that's, yeah, as I said, that's for me, one of the secret of happiness is to be able to move forward, not to look back all the time.

1:16:28Because I saw that, I saw that with my father and with a lot of people, with a lot of immigrants, you know, who always say, oh, I will go back and always listen to radio programs from their country and watch. And at the end, it's like they didn't live. So, no, I want to take the fire and move.

1:16:53Well, it's an amazing book. I loved reading it. It's completely compelling and it's been totally wonderful to talk to you. and for you to be on Fashion Neurosis. Thank you so much, Leila Slimani. Thank you, Bella.