quotes by 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 (In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong)

" "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

"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 (In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong)

"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 (In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong)

"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 the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong)

"Merasa diperlakukan tidak adil kadang bisa menimbulkan luka, tetapi kadang juga bisa menyembuhkan luka, dan bahkan kadang juga bisa membunuh orang yang merasakannya. Tetapi bagi wanita, perasaan itu lebih sering menjadi alasan yang kuat untuk bertahan"
— Amin Maalouf (Leo Africanus)

"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 (Le Premier Siecle Apres Beatrice)

"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 First Century After Beatrice)

"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 (The First Century After Beatrice)

"C'est notre regard qui enferme souvent les autres dans leurs plus étroites appartenances, et c'est notre regard aussi qui peut les libérer. "
— 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 (In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong)

"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 (In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong)

"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

"Jedes Glück ist flüchtig, ob es nun eine Woche anhält oder dreißig Jahre; man weint die gleichen Tränen, wenn der letzte Tag heranbricht, und würde um einen Aufschub seine Seele verkaufen."
— Amin Maalouf (The Rock of Tanios)

"Eure Lippen haben sich gestreift, sind auseinander dann, Als sei euer Anteil am Glück bereits verbraucht und als hättet ihr Angst, vom Glück der anderen schon zu kosten. Ihr wart unschuldig? Wovor hat Unschuld je bewahrt? Selbst der Schöpfer sagt uns, wir sollen zu Festen Lämmer schlachten, Nie aber Wölfe..."
— Amin Maalouf (The Rock of Tanios)

"Nichts weiter als eine Legende, sagst du? Du willst nichts weiter als Fakten? Fakten sind vergänglich, glaube mir das, nur die Legende bleibt, so wie die Seele nach dem Körper oder der Duft einer vorbeigegangenen Frau."
— Amin Maalouf (The Rock of Tanios)

"So sind meine Berge nun mal: vereinen Heimatverbundenheit und Fernweh, sind Ort der Zuflucht und der Durchreise, ein Land, in dem Milch und Honig fließt, aber auch Blut. Weder Paradies noch Hölle. Fegefeuer."
— Amin Maalouf (The Rock of Tanios)

"Hatte ich nicht hinter der Legende die Wahrheit gesucht? Als ich den Kern der Wahrheit erreicht zu haben glaubte, da war er Legende."
— Amin Maalouf (The Rock of Tanios)