Rabih Alameddine > Quotes

“...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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati

“I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.”
― Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.”
― Rabih Alameddine, Koolaids: The Art of War

“I opened myself to you only to be skinned alive. The more vulnerable I became, the faster and more deft your knife. Knowing what was happening, still I stayed and let you carve more. That's how much I loved you. That's how much.”
― Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“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, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“The eye always fills in the imperfections.”
― Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?”
― Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“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, The Hakawati

“By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across--each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip--is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati

“Passion was the antithesis of morality.”
― Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“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, The Hakawati

“You can say that Lebanese has hundreds of lexemes for family relations. Family to the Lebanese is as snow to the Inuit.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The Hakawati

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

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters