Rabih Alameddine Quotes

If I were to pray in Arabic, I'd pray to Allah. If I were to pray in English, I'd pray to God.

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?

In reality, the only true model of a successful woman was the Divine Sarah.

My father and I rarely saw eye to eye when I was growing up. We saw the world differently. It was only when we were both adults that we were able to share spectacles. However, football, and particularly the World Cup, was when we, enemy combatants, could traverse trenches and be together.

I realised when it came to men, I did not pick the beautiful or the correct. I picked the wrong one.

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.

No matter how good a story is, there is more at stake in the telling.

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.

Fate would never permit happiness to a man of such talent-
a content poet is a mediocre one, a happy poet is insufferable.

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

To write is to know that you are not at home.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo.
I was not, I was, I am not, I don't care.

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?

I'd dismembered it in my memories. I'd disremembered it.

Of course, the pile grows and grows until I decide that I'm not going to buy a single book until I read my stack. Sometimes that works.

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.

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.

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.

Hope is forgivable when you're young, isn't it? With no suspicion of irony, without a soupçon of cynicism, hope lures with its siren song.

Ah, the deliciousness of discovering a masterwork. My heart begins to lift. 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.

The reasons why a player is better on one club than on another are many. I certainly am not an expert and can't explain.

As much as I loved it and felt at home within its cages, school is more Hades than Heaven - a ritual killing of childhood is performed in school, children are put to death.

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.

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)

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

Transmuting this sandy metaphor, if literature is my sandbox, then the real world is my hourglass - an hourglass that drains grain by grain.

What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.

I never wanted to be prominent enough to have enemies.

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

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

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.

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.

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.

We rarely consider that we're also formed by the decisions we didn't make, by events that could have happened but didn't, or by our lack of choices, for that matter. (p. 22)

Memory, memoir, autobiography - lies, lies, all lies.

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

One's first response is that these Beirutis must be savagely insane to murder each other for such trivial divergences. Don't judge us too harshly. 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.

I jokingly say if there was one great thing about, you know, the Lebanese Civil War was that it forced me to read.

If you want to know whether soccer is big in America, pick a weekend, go to any park in the land, and pay attention. We're there. We've always been.

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.

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.

When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.

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

Sex, like art, can unsettle a soul, can grind a heart in a mortar. Sex, like literature, can sneak the other within one's wall, even if for only a moment, a moment before one immures oneself again.

No, I might be able to poke fun at the Quran for its childishly imperious content, but not for its style.

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.

She made an appearance to offer me courage, and I worried about her appearance. Shame. Such a worrywart I am. I miss miracles blooming before my eyes: I concentrate on a fading star and miss the constellation. I overlook dazzling thunderstorms worrying whether I have laundry hanging.

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

The memory seems both real and unreal, reliable and tenuous, solid and insubstantial.

I always say show me a storyteller who doesn't embellish, and I'll show you a bad one.

On Lou's lips a trace of pinot and out of them poured tales of acts of viciousness worthy of the great Lucifer himself, stories told through the night, the tortures, the beatings, the broken bones, every school has its Tigellinus, but his had more than one and each with followers, all-American boys who delighted in discovering how much pain a soul could withstand, two suicide attempts and all his parents and school could do was try to make Lou change his behavior, his behavior, his behavior, his, his, his, to modify his being just a bit. It gets better, Doc, fucking gets better, no one dared suggest that maybe the family and the school should change, or heaven forbid, that it was the all-Americans who should be modifying their beings, no, the homo should grin and bear it dumbly...

I want a God that makes me twirl.' I jumped off the couch. I untucked and unbuttoned my shirt so it would flow like a robe. 'Like this. I can do this for God.' I held my hands out. I twirled and twirled and twirled. 'Look,' I said. 'Look.

Forgetting is as integral to memory as death is to life.

I am my family's appendix, it's unnecessary appendage. - Aaliya

The receding perspective of my past smothers my present. Remembering is the malignancy that feasts on my now.

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.

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

Every writer uses his own way to motivate oneself.

I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.

I always assumed that everyone knew no country would ever be awarded a World Cup without pricey gifts exchanging hands under the tables.

There is none more conformist than one who flaunts his individuality.

The platter could probably sate four starving Ethiopians into a crapulous state.

Translation is so important. The new American translations of the Bible sound like a Judith Krantz novel.

He may be my half brother, but we're not related. A chasm of incommunicable worlds lies between us. (p. 70)

Nobody ever said I'm a simple personality.

By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case.

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.

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

We are all children when we sleep.

Joy is the anticipation of joy.

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.

Belief is the enemy of a storyteller

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?

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

Memory chooses to preserve what desire cannot hope to sustain.

Soccer is the most widely played sport in the U.S.

They are so proud of Gibran. Probably the most overrated writer in history. I don't think any Lebanese has ever read him. If they had, they would keep their mouth fucking shut.

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

I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.

I slipped into art to escape life. I sneaked off into literature.

Neither father nor son moved, but stayed face to face for hours and hours, neither looking away nor surrendering, until the sun finished its daily pilgrimage, for no day is so long that it is not ended by nightfall.

I try to live without interfering in the lives of others because I have no wish for them to interfere in mine.

My patience, like my time in this world, grows shorter.

One of the things I enjoy most during the World Cup is watching a team improve, mature, and gel during the course of the tournament.

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.

The men go out to greet the arrivals. A hundred men come out of the cars, some with machine guns. Shots are fired in the air. They scream, they shout, they hail the hero. The groom will be getting some tonight. The men have come to collect their prize. More men shouting, some come into the house. She stands. The strange man, the groom she has met only twice, smiles at her. She walks out with him.

You can tell how well a marriage is working by counting the bite marks on each partner's tongue.

Before prognostication, a disclaimer: I have never been able to pick a winner. Not that it has ever stopped me from trying to. Well, it has stopped me from buying stock, but let's not talk about that.

In her world, husbands were omnipotent, never impotent.

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

I was always alone, Doc, solitary whether I wished to be or not, ever since I could remember I wished to be lost in another, thought that somehow I could disappear into that heart of yours, take walks within your veins, wander through the bones of you. You had friends, Satan said, you loved and were loved, you must not forget that, at least not that. But did I allow anyone in, I asked Satan, and he said, Did you, does anyone?

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.

She was socially inept, an affliction I am quite intimate with.

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

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.