Amin Maalouf Quotes & Sayings

Yes indeed, both Muslim and Jewish!I, her father, am Muslim, at least on paper; her mother is Jewish, at least in theory. With us, religion is transmitted through the father; among Jews, through the mother. Therefore, according to the Muslims, Nadia was Muslim; according to the Jews, she was Jewish. She herself might have chosen one or the other, or neither, she chose to be both at once ... Yes, both at once and more. She was proud of all the bloodlines that had converged in her, roads of conquest or exile from central Asia, Anatolia, the Ukraine, Arab, Bessarabia, Armenia, Bavaria ... She refused to divide out her blood, her soul. — Amin Maalouf

The identity cannot be compartmentalized; it cannot be split in halves or thirds, nor have any clearly defined set of boundaries. I do not have several identities, I only have one, made of all the elements that have shaped its unique proportions. — Amin Maalouf

The pursuit of origins is a way of rescuing territory from death and oblivion, a reconquest that ought to be patient, devoted, relentless and faithful. — Amin Maalouf

What strange times we live in, when good must disguise itself in the tawdry rags of evil! — Amin Maalouf

What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself — Amin Maalouf

The past is bound to be fragmentary, bound to be reconstructed, bound to be reinvented. It serves only to collect the truths of today. If our present is the child of the past, our past is the child of the present. And the future will be the harvester of our bastard offspring. — Amin Maalouf

Are you certain that a man's life begins with his birth? — Amin Maalouf

Doctrines are meant to serve man, not the other way around. — Amin Maalouf

Some women's arms are places of exile; others are a native land. — Amin Maalouf

Never hesitate to go far away, beyond all seas, all frontiers, all countries, all beliefs. — Amin Maalouf

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages. — Amin Maalouf

God, she was beautiful - my first image of the Orient - a woman such as only the desert poet knew how to praise: her face was the sun, her hair the protecting shadow, her eyes fountains of cool water, her body the most slender of palm-trees and her smile a mirage. — Amin Maalouf

Why should we take the diversity of human cultures less seriously than the diversity of animal or plant species? Ought not our just desire to preserve our environment extend to the human environment itself? Our world would be a dreary place, both from the natural and from the cultural point of view, if the only surviving species were those we consider "useful," together with a few we judge to be decorative or that have acquired symbolic value. — Amin Maalouf

At my age, only naivete still manages to scandalize me sometimes. — Amin Maalouf

So I've become an exile without ever leaving my country. — Amin Maalouf

It seems clear that the Arab East still sees the West as a natural enemy. Against that enemy, any hostile action-be it political, military, or based on oil-is considered no more than legitimate vengeance. And there can be no doubt that the schism between these two worlds dates from the Crusades, deeply felt by the Arabs, even today, as an act of rape — Amin Maalouf

Our ancestors are our children; we peer through a hole in the wall and watch them play in their rooms, and they can't see us. — Amin Maalouf

For it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free. — Amin Maalouf

When a man is rich, whether in gold or in knowledge, he must treat the poverty of others with consideration. — Amin Maalouf

We are not just visitors on this planet, it belongs to us just as we belong to her, its past is ours, so is its future. — Amin Maalouf

All pleasures must be paid for, do not despise those that state their price. — Amin Maalouf

We die, just as we were born, at the edge of a road not of our choosing. — Amin Maalouf

Life is not so long that one can grow tired of it — Amin Maalouf

Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived. — Amin Maalouf

I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road ... all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them. — Amin Maalouf

I no more believe in simplistic solutions than I do in simplistic identieties. The world is a complex machine that can't be dismantled with a srewdriver. But that shouldn't prevent us from observing, from trying to understand, from discussing, and sometimes suggesting a subject for reflection. — Amin Maalouf

Let us thank God for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; of night, that day is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning; illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning. Let us give thanks to Him for having given us weariness and pain, so that rest and joy are to have meaning. Let us give thanks to him, whose wisdom is infinite. — Amin Maalouf

I look at the world and my own life as if I were a stranger. I wish for nothing, except perhaps that time would stop. — Amin Maalouf

Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbors them with difficult choices — Amin Maalouf

I am the son of the road , my country is a caravan and my life is the most unexpected of voyages. i belong to earth and to the god and it is to them that I will one day soon return — Amin Maalouf

What's a year in comparison with eternity? what's a day? an hour? a second? Such measures have meaning only for a heart that's still beating. — Amin Maalouf

People always manage to 'prove' what they want to believe; they'd be just as well off if they tried to prove the opposite. — Amin Maalouf

A community begins to fall apart the moment it agrees to abandon the weakest of its members. — Amin Maalouf

The truth is rarely buried; it is merely lying in wait behind veils of modesty, pain, or indifference; the one necessary prerequisite is a passionate desire to lift the veils. — Amin Maalouf

Someone other than I might have used the word "roots". It is not part of my vocabulary. I don't like the word, and I like even less the image it conveys. Roots burrow into the ground, twist in the mud, and thrive in darkness; they hold trees in captivity from their inception and nourish them at the price of blackmail: "Free yourself and you'll die — Amin Maalouf

Let your tears roll tonight, but tomorrow you will start the battle again. What defeats us, always, is just our own sorrow. — Amin Maalouf

The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity. — Amin Maalouf

Clawing its way towards us, the ugliness of the world tore away our hiding-place. — Amin Maalouf

You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you'll understand quite a lot. — Amin Maalouf

What we need to do is enter sensibly into an age of liberty and peaceful diversity, casting aside the injustices of the past without replacing them by new ones or by other kinds of exclusion or intolerance, and recognising the right of everyone to include several linguistic allegiances within his own identity. — Amin Maalouf

Isn't it a characteristic of the age we live in that it has made everyone in a way a migrant and a member of a minority? — Amin Maalouf

In my prayers, I want to say: Lord, don't be far from me, and also don't come too close. Let me contemplate the stars on the texture of your cloth, but don't unveil your face to me. Allow me to hear the rivers that you send running, but Lord! Lord! Don't allow me hearing your voice — Amin Maalouf

I have always thought that Heaven invented all the problems, and Hell the solutions. — Amin Maalouf

It's the relationship I have with the world: always trying to escape from reality. I'm a daydreamer; I don't feel in harmony with my epoch or the societies I live in. — Amin Maalouf

Few doctrines throughout History have been able to eradicate hatred, most of them have simply tried to deflect it from one object to another: to the infidel, the foreigner, the apostate, the master, the slave, the father. Naturally, hatred is only called hatred when we see it in others; the hatred which is in ourselves bears a thousand different names. — Amin Maalouf

I despise the zeal of the devout, but I have never said that the One is two.
I am not one of those for whom faith is simply fear of judgement. How do I pray? I study a rose, I count the stars, I marvel at the beauty of the creation and how perfectly ordered it is, at man, the most beautiful work of the Creator, his brain thirsting for knowledge, his heart for love, and his senses, all his senses alert or gratified. — Amin Maalouf

When faced with a chaotic and convoluted situation, one always thinks that it will take centuries to sort it out. Suddenly a man appears and as if by magic, the tree we thought was doomed takes on new life and starts bearing leaves and fruits and giving shade. (Shireen in Samarkand) — Amin Maalouf

A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous. — Amin Maalouf

Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time to solve the dilemma and prevent people from engaging, a few years hence, in bitter and fruitless linguistic conflicts. We know all too well what time will do.
The only possible answer is a voluntary policy aimed at strengthening linguistic diversity and based on a simple idea: nowadays everybody obviously needs three languages. The first is his language of identity; the third is English. Between the two we have to promote a third language, freely chosen, which will often but not always be another European language. This will be for everyone the main foreign language taught at school, but it will also be much more than that
the language of the heart, the adopted language, the language you have married, the language you love. — Amin Maalouf

Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom? — Amin Maalouf

Nothing is born of nothing, least of all knowledge, modernity, or enlightened thought; progress is made in tiny surges, in successive laps, like an endless relay race. But there are links without which nothing would be passed on, and for that reason, they deserve the gratitude of all who benefited from them. — Amin Maalouf

People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion. — Amin Maalouf

You can't say history teaches us this or that; it gives us more questions than answers, and many answers to every question. — Amin Maalouf

...it's better to wake up amid the pangs of desire than amid those of remorse. — Amin Maalouf

I came from here, you came from there.
And now we're both sitting at the same table. — Amin Maalouf

Perhaps writing only arouses the passions in order to allay them, as beaters flush out the game in order to expose it to the hunter's arrows. — Amin Maalouf

Some women's arms are placed of exile; others are a native land. — Amin Maalouf

By living exclusively for the present, we let ourselves be hemmed in by an ocean of death. Conversely, by reviving the past, we enlarge our living space. — Amin Maalouf

Virtue becomes unhealthy if it is not softened by some misdemeanors, and faith quickly becomes cruel if is not subdued by certain doubts. — Amin Maalouf

Is there a difference between being the midwife of truth, or the midwife of legends? — Amin Maalouf

I have the profoundest respect for people who behave in a generous way because of religion. But I come from a country where the misuse of religion has had catastrophic consequences. One must judge people not by what faith they proclaim but by what they do. — Amin Maalouf

Don't be so timid! When you were a child, didn't you speak out the truth that the oldest ones kept secret? Well, you were right then. You must find the time of innocence in yourself again, because that was also the time of courage. — Amin Maalouf

The twentieth century will have taught us that no doctrine in itself is necessarily a liberating force: all of them may be perverted or take a wrong turning; all have blood on their hands - communism, liberalism, nationalism, each of the great religions, and even secularism. Nobody has a monopoly on humane values. — Amin Maalouf

During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba. — Amin Maalouf

It's not often in life that you can misbehave for the good of the cause — Amin Maalouf