An Unnecessary Woman

by Rabih Alameddine

If that’s the case, why do Americans always behave as if they’re victims? Hear me on this for a moment.

Most of the books published these days consist of a series of whines followed by an epiphany. I call these memoirs and confessional novels

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.

to a childhood that I missed and miss. No nostalgia is felt as keenly as nostalgia for things that never existed.

I can’t tell whether my understanding of her is limited, if I can’t get to know her because of a basic deficiency of mine, or whether this is as far as any human can understand another.

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.”