Alameddine Rabih Quotes & Sayings

I thought every person should live for art, not just me, and furthermore, why would I want to be normal? Why would I want to be stupid like everyone else? — Rabih Alameddine

Death comes in many shapes and sizes, but it always comes. No one escapes the little tag on the big toe. The four horsemen approach. The rider on the red horse says, "This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth war." The rider on the black horse says, "This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth plague." The rider on the pale horse says, "This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth death." The rider on the white horse says, "Fuck this good and faithful servant. He is a non-Christian homosexual, for God's sake. You brought me all the way out here for a fucking fag, a heathen. I didn't die for this dingbat's sins." The irascible rider on the white horse leads the other three lemmings away. The hospital bed hurts my back. — Rabih Alameddine

No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been. No nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed. — Rabih Alameddine

I read Shakespeare when I was 14 because it's what we were taught. — Rabih Alameddine

Now I love hoops. I'm a diehard UCLA fan, have been since my freshman year. But basketball is the '1812 Overture.' Pomp and circumstance, fireworks and cannons, lots and lots of fun, and in the end, still Tchaikovsky. — Rabih Alameddine

I never wanted to be prominent enough to have enemies. — Rabih Alameddine

A phoenix, Beirut seems to always pull itself out its ashes, reinvents itself, has been conquered numerous times in its 7,000-year history, yet it survives by both becoming whatever its conquerors wished it to be and retaining its idiosyncratic persona. — Rabih Alameddine

I stuck out more in an English public school than I would have had I marched in a May Day parade with the Red Army in Moscow or sashayed the Yves St. Laurent catwalk with supermodels or hunted seals with the Inuit or - well, you get the idea. — Rabih Alameddine

In Czech, according to Milan Kundera, litost is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery. — Rabih Alameddine

We seem, particularly over here in the West and in America in particular, to have forgotten that we are, in large measures, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. — Rabih Alameddine

In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English. — Rabih Alameddine

Reality never meets our wants, and adjusting both is why we tell stories. — Rabih Alameddine

I know many sports fans that don't enjoy soccer. The argument is that there's no action, not enough of it. — Rabih Alameddine

I can dig out the old chestnut from George Santayana, that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," but it serves no purpose. It's a hopelessly optimistic quote. We are condemned to repeat the past whether we remember it or not. It is inevitable; just ask Nietzsche (eternal return) or Hegel (history repeats itself) or James McCourt (history repeats itself like hiccups). — Rabih Alameddine

In 1982, Algeria made their first appearance at the World Cup. I believe it was the first Arab country to do so. — Rabih Alameddine

When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book. I try to be involved.
I am Raskalnikov. I am K. I am Humbert and Lolita.
I am you.
If you read these pages and think I'm the way I am because I lived through a civil war, you can't feel my pain. If you believe you're not like me because one woman, and only one, Hannah, chose to be my friend, then you're unable to empathize. — Rabih Alameddine

There are a few places on the East Coast, and maybe Los Angeles, where women understand evening gowns. The rest of the country still has far to go. — Rabih Alameddine

I couldn't tell the truth if my life depended on it. — Rabih Alameddine

I consider it a shame that most contemporary American writing seems informed more by Hemingway, the hero of adolescent boys of all ages and genders, than by the sui generis genius of letters, Faulkner. A phalanx of books about boredom in the Midwest is lauded (where the Midwest lies is a source of constant puzzlement to me, somewhere near Iowa, I presume), as are books about unexplored angst in New Jersey or couples unable to communicate in Connecticut. It was Camus who asserted that American novelists are the only ones who think they need not be intellectuals. — Rabih Alameddine

Like most Lebanese, Joumana speaks rapidly, one sentence dovetailing into another, producing guttural words and phrases as if gargling with mouthwash. I prefer slow conversations where words are counted like pearls, conversations with many pauses, pauses replacing words. — Rabih Alameddine

If you go through any culture that has had wars, go to the bomb shelters, and you'll hear some amazing stories. Yes, it's a necessary thing that we actually both distract ourselves and it's a way to bond. — Rabih Alameddine

My features have blunted with the passage of time, my reflection only faintly resembles how I see myself. Gravity demands payback for the years my body has resisted it. — Rabih Alameddine

Can you imagine how lonely she must have felt when she received that phone call? Your lover has just died, your companion has abandoned you, but don't you dare make an inappropriate sound, because your family is around. No one to touch you the way he did, no one to understand you, no one to hug you to sleep, but don't dare allow your face to show a glint of grief. The cutting pain of feeling alone amid loved ones. — Rabih Alameddine

All living languages are promiscuous. We promiscuous speakers shamelessly shoplift words, plucking bons mots and phrases from any tempting language. We wear these words when we wish to be more formal, more elegant, more mysterious, worldly, precise, vague. — Rabih Alameddine

I think I'm being conservative when I say there are more people playing soccer in the United States than in 90% of the world's other countries, probably 95%. — Rabih Alameddine

Beirut has survived for thousands and thousands of years by spreading her beautiful legs for every army within smelling distance. — Rabih Alameddine

Memory, memoir, autobiography - lies, lies, all lies. — Rabih Alameddine

I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books. — Rabih Alameddine

A houri stroked the top of Isaac's head. "Are you truly pure?" he asked.
"We are as chaste as the sheltered eggs of ostriches."
"How dull," Isaac replied. — Rabih Alameddine

I can easily hold two opposing beliefs at the same time without any problem, which I find - well, mind-expanding, really. — Rabih Alameddine

Isn't a sensitive soul simply a means of transforming a deficiency into proud disdain? — Rabih Alameddine

I can relate to Marguerite Duras even though I'm not French, nor have I been consumed by love for an East Asian man. I can life inside Alice Munro's skin. But I can't relate to my own mother. My body is full of sentences and moments, my heart resplendent with lovely turns of phrases, but neither is able to be touched by another. — Rabih Alameddine

Once upon a time there was an island visited by ruin and inhabited by strange peccant creatures. "It's a sad place," I say, "and too much like my own life." He nods. "You mean, the losing struggle against inscrutable blind forces, young dreams brought to ruin." "Yes," I tell Coover, "my young dreams are gone. I lost the struggle a long, long time ago. — Rabih Alameddine

I was a lonely boy. I spent all my time reading books and watching the world. [some] tried to draw me out at first, but their hearts weren't in it. And after all, they had enough troubles of their own. — Rabih Alameddine

Anna Karenina was the first time I allowed a book and its world into my house. — Rabih Alameddine

'Harat' is actually - it's a Lebanese dialect word. It comes from 'the mapmaker,' somebody who makes a map. And it basically means somebody who tells fibs or exaggerate tales a little bit. — Rabih Alameddine

Her appearance has changed as well, and I don't mean just the intense reticulation of lines and wrinkles, the true stigmata of life. — Rabih Alameddine

Among the many definitions of progress, "enemy of trees" and "killer of birds" seem to me the most apt. — Rabih Alameddine

In 1975, I left the burning city of Beirut for the quiet insanity of England. To say that short, frail and wispy 15-year-old me didn't fit in would be such an understatement as to be a joke. — Rabih Alameddine

One reason we desire explanations is that they separate us and make us feel safe. — Rabih Alameddine

The story of the king is the story of the people, and unfortunately, to this day, no king has learned that lesson. — Rabih Alameddine

She felt the intimate loss of who she was meant to become. — Rabih Alameddine

Causation extraction makes Jack a dull reader. — Rabih Alameddine

Later, much later, as an adult woman, she wrote of her need to be loved, to be desired, as a ravenous monster with an exigent appetite living in a black hole within. Whatever love was thrown her way, the monster devoured it and left her with nothing. — Rabih Alameddine

Literature gives me life, and life kills me. Well, life kills everyone. — Rabih Alameddine

When I asked my father why Mademoiselle Finkelstein was such a cruel woman, he said it was because she was unmarried, which caused women to be come bitter, harsh, and unforgiving after they reached the age of thirty. of course, he explained, they made wonderful teachers, because they had the unfettered time to dedicate to their profession and they knew how to instill discipline. on the other hand, unmarried men, like his younger brother, Uncle Jihad, were simply eccentrics and did not suffer accordingly. The difference, he elaborated, was that men chose to be unmarried, whereas women had to live with never having been chosen. — Rabih Alameddine

A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance - this peak of ecstasy. — Rabih Alameddine

Pundits these days keep jabbering and hooting about the Internet being the greatest advancement. Web this, web that, and let the resident spider suck the life out of you. — Rabih Alameddine

I am a functioning human being. Mostly. Just so you don't make too much fun of me, the mostly above refers to functioning, not to human being. — Rabih Alameddine

Nobody ever calls me a soccer-playing writer, even though I play soccer and it's part of who I am. — Rabih Alameddine

Language, after all, is organic. You can't force words into existence. You can't force new meanings into words. And some words can't or won't or shouldn't be laundered or neutered. Language develops naturally. — Rabih Alameddine

In Lebanon, there are completely different opinions and values in one country in terms of religion, modernity, tradition, East and West - which allows for a kind of intellectual development not available anywhere else. — Rabih Alameddine

My books show me what it's like to live in a reliable country where you flick on a switch and a bulb is guaranteed to shine and remain on, where you know that cars will stop at red lights and those traffic lights will not cease working a couple of times a day. How does it feel when a plumber shows up at the designated time, when he shows up at all? How does it feel to assume that when someone says she'll do something by a certain date, she in fact does it? — Rabih Alameddine

I have been blessed with many curses in my life, not the least of which was being born half Lebanese and half American. Throughout my life, these contradictory parts battled endlessly, classed, never coming to a satisfactory conclusion. I shuffled ad nauseam between the need to assert my individuality and the need to belong to my clan, being terrified of loneliness and terrorized of losing myself in relationships. I was the black sheep of my family, yet an essential part of it. — Rabih Alameddine

Had I known that coffee could taste so good, I would have gotten drunk on it every day. — Rabih Alameddine

In the summer of 1988, my father took me up to look at the remains of our home, the dream house that he'd built. It was my first time since our family left four years earlier. Political and obscene graffiti covered the half-torn walls. There was no ceiling and surprisingly no floor: the parquet, the stone, the marble, all looted. — Rabih Alameddine

Joy is the anticipation of joy. — Rabih Alameddine

A game of soccer induces more than enjoyment, more than entertainment. — Rabih Alameddine

Homophobia is rampant in soccer, probably more so than in any other sport. I'm not sure why. — Rabih Alameddine

There are over 1 million refugees in Lebanon, a country of 4 million people. How do we solve that? I have no idea. What's going on, I really don't know. — Rabih Alameddine

A girl is supposed to be ecstatic on her wedding day. According to tradition, getting married is what we live for. Hope your wedding day is soon, they say. To young girls even, barely ten years old. May we all celebrate your wedding day. What did it feel like for her, though? She waits at her father's house, all dressed up in white. The men in her family all proud, happy, one less mouth to feed, one less honor to defend. — Rabih Alameddine

Nothing is working. Nothing in my life is working. Giants of literature, philosophy, and the arts have influenced my life, but what have I done with this life? I remain a speck in a tumultuous universe that has little concern for me. I am no more than dust, a mote - dust to dust. I am a blade of grass upon which the stormtrooper's boot stomps. I had dreams, and they were not about ending up a speck. I didn't dream of becoming a star, but I thought I might have a small nonspeaking role in a grand epic, an epic with a touch of artistic credentials. I didn't dream of becoming a giant - I wasn't that delusional or arrogant - but I wanted to be more than a speck, maybe a midget. I could have been a midget. All our dreams of glory are but manure in the end. — Rabih Alameddine

Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don't bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they don't rattle your windows and nerves with indiscriminate sonic booms just because they can? — Rabih Alameddine

She felt the intimate loss of who was meant to become. — Rabih Alameddine

I also understand that you have to lie to yourself to survive in a bad marriage, you have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life. — Rabih Alameddine

You can say that Lebanese has hundreds of lexemes for family relations. Family to the Lebanese is as snow to the Inuit. — Rabih Alameddine

Saint Francis de Salle, not the real Saint Francis with the cute birds and animals, wrote that in his book Introduction to the Devout Life, which talked about how bad sex was in four large volumes. It earned Francis here a sainthood. All I can say is, I am glad I'm not Christian. For us Muslims, we just stone adulterers to death, which is much more humane than guilt. — Rabih Alameddine

Peaks cannot exist without valleys. — Rabih Alameddine

Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time. It is the world outside that box that gives me trouble. I have adapted tamely, though not conventionally, to this visible world so I can retreat without much inconvenience into my inner world of books. (p. 5) — Rabih Alameddine

But to paraphrase the ever-paraphraseable Freud, who said something to the effect that when you speak about the past you lie with every breath you take, I will say this: When you write about the past, you lie with each letter, with every grapheme, including the goddamn comma. — Rabih Alameddine

Hope, the great deceiver, seduced her that morning. — Rabih Alameddine

Now, please don't tell me you don't care about how you look and that there's more to you than your appearance. There are two kinds of people in this world : people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't. — Rabih Alameddine

Cervantes told me history is the mother of truth.
Borges told me historical truth is not what took place; it is what we think took place.
So Billy Shakespeare was queer.
Ronnie was the greatest president in history, right up there on Mount Rushmore.
AIDS is mankind's greatest plague.
Israel only kills terrorists.
America never bombed Lebanon.
Jesus was straight. Juda and he were just friends.
Roseanne's parents molested her as an infant.
Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat deserved their Nobels.
And Gaetan Dugas started the AIDS epidemic. — Rabih Alameddine

Childhood is played out in a foreign language and our memory of it is a Constance Garnett translation. — Rabih Alameddine

Passion was the antithesis of morality. — Rabih Alameddine

Satan said, You are a temp in life. — Rabih Alameddine

I arrived in Dallas two days before the party and planned on leaving the day after. I hated the city as much as I thought I would. All anyone could talk about were the Cowboys and their chances in the playoffs. Charlene was happy. Joe was not, or so it seemed to me, in spite of the fact that he had finally gotten exactly what he thought he wanted from a wife: she gave him an adorable boy, she did everything in their home including laundry, and most important, she did not embarrass him. Whenever I was alone with Joe during the two days I was there, Charlene would send her son into the room with us. The first time I carried him, Charlene made sure to mention how surprised she was that I had motherly instincts. She probably used the pronoun we more in one day than I have in my whole life. I did not blame her. Most plain women stake their claims clumsily. — Rabih Alameddine

At the heart of most antagonisms are irreconcilable similarities. Hundred-year wars were fought over whether Jesus was human in divine form or divine in human form. Belief is murderous. After — Rabih Alameddine

No nostalgia is felt as keenly as nostalgia for things that never existed. I — Rabih Alameddine

In every evocation of a childhood scene, my stepfather's face is the least detailed, the most out of focus; when I think of him my memory's eyes have cataracts. (p. 12) — Rabih Alameddine

Yes, I am a tad obsessive. For a nonreligious woman, this is my faith. — Rabih Alameddine

What is the purpose of a city if not to grant the greatest of gifts, anonymity? — Rabih Alameddine

Uncle Jihad used to say that what happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of those events affect us. My father and I may have shared numerous experiences, but, as I was constantly finding out, we rarely shared their stories; we din't know how to listen to one another. — Rabih Alameddine

I can see myself sitting all day in my chair, immersed in lives, plots, and sentences, intoxicated by words and chimeras, paralyzed by satisfaction and contentment, reading until the deepening twilight, until I can no longer make out the words, until my mind begins to wander, until my aching muscles are no longer able to keep the book aloft. Joy is the anticipation of joy. Reading a fine book for the first time is as sumptuous as the first sip of orange juice that breaks the fast in Ramadan. — Rabih Alameddine

Anyone who says the pen is mightier than the sword has never come face-to-face with a gun. — Rabih Alameddine

In her world, husbands were omnipotent, never impotent. — Rabih Alameddine

I loved problems on paper, and I was good at math, but I was a mechanical engineer, and I never understood - or cared to - how a car worked. — Rabih Alameddine

I started writing half a paragraph of a mystery novel, half a paragraph there, and they were terrible. — Rabih Alameddine

Me? I was lost for long time. I didn't make any friends for few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school [ ... ]. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. [ ... ]. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first. — Rabih Alameddine

When I wrote my first book, 'Koolaids,' I felt rejected and not wanted. — Rabih Alameddine

Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book. — Rabih Alameddine

A team without hope fizzles: no flameout, no fire. — Rabih Alameddine

A hakawati is a teller of tales, myths, and fables. A storyteller, and entertainer. A troubadour of sorts, someone who earns his keep by beguiling an audience with yarns. Like the word "hekayah" story, fable, news, hakawati is derived from the Lebanese word "haki", which means talk or conversation. This suggests that in Lebanese the mere act of talking is storytelling. — Rabih Alameddine

Nick commenced a monologue explaining the impossibility of such a phenomenon: the subordination of content to the aesthetics of language in Arabic literature, the dominance of panegyrics and eulogies as an art form, etc. — Rabih Alameddine

I know. You think you love art because you have a sensitive soul.
Isn't a sensitive soul simply a means of transforming a deficiency into proud disdain?
You think art has meaning. You think you're not like me. — Rabih Alameddine

Close friends consider me a literary snob. — Rabih Alameddine

I wonder whether there is such a thing as a sense of individuality. Is it all a facade, covering a deep need to belong? Are we simply pack animals desperately trying to pretend we are not? — Rabih Alameddine

I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic. — Rabih Alameddine

I allegedly am an outsider writer, so I write from the perspective of somebody who doesn't completely fit in. But at the same time, I can state the fact that I don't know of any good writer who is not an outsider writer. — Rabih Alameddine

I can make up stories with the best of them. I've been telling stories since I was a little kid. — Rabih Alameddine