House of Stone Quotes

“Subtle and coy, the cemento at Maalouf's did not speak of war, or frontiers, and the spaces they narrowed, but, rather, grandeur. The tiles returned one to a realm where imagination, artistry, and craftsmanship were not only appreciated but given free reign, where what was unique and striking, or small and perfect, or wrought with care was desired, where gazed-upon objects were the products of peaceful hearts, hands long practiced and trained. War ends the values and traditions that produce such treasures. Nothing is maintained. Cultures that may seem as durable as stone can break like glass, leaving all the things that held them together unattended. I believe that the craftsman, the artist, the cook, and the silversmith are peacemakers. They instill grace; they lull the world to calm.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“I wondered whether he was trying to return to a place that no longer existed. Isn’t that always the case when we try to go home again?”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“Arabic also has a far greater facility to communicate sarcasm, and it can be employed precisely, or with pitch-perfect irony.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“Sometimes it is better to imagine the past than to remember it.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“After life is bent, torn, exploded, there are shattered pieces that do not heal for years, if at all. What is left are scars and something else—shame, I suppose, shame for letting it all continue.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“He was a man caught between two places, one where he would always be a stranger, one where he was no longer a native. Time and change had made him a perpetual traveler, never comfortable again, like many who had lost their homes or those who had traveled across the world, always searching for them.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“Like my grandmother, I understood questions of identity, how being torn in two often leaves something less than one.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“What befalls a trained soldier during combat between nations is one thing; what occurs at home—on our street, in our yard, and on our land, to family—is not the same. In Qana, those who died would not flee, would not leave their homes. That is what bayt means.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“I should be in Beirut, I thought, working as a journalist, but another part of me was so wary of that old life of guns and misery. I did not want to see Tyre again, or Qana, or Baghdad. I wanted to do nothing more than move dirt from one place to another.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“In the Middle East, the first lesson is the meaning of silence.

The state of the spirit, it is believed, reveals itself in small tasks, rituals, all the things that war interrupts.

I believe that the craftsman, the artist, the cook and the silversmith are peacemakers. They instill grace, they lull the world to calm.

Sometimes it is better to imagine the past than to remember it.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“NO ROADS, NOT a single one, lead to the place where we had gotten ourselves.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“For so long, Lebanon had wrestled with the rudimentary questions of identity: whether its inhabitants were Arabs first or Lebanese above all, whether they belonged to East or West, whether they were bound to a destiny that stretched far beyond its borders—the Muslim world, for instance—or were part of a legacy as particular as the history of ancient Phoenicia.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“Artificial and forced, instruments themselves of repression, the borders were their obstacle, having wiped away what was best about the Arab world. They hewed to no certain logic; a glimpse at any map suggests as much. The lines are too straight,”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“We have lost the splendors our ancestors created, and we go elsewhere. People are reminded of that every day here, where an older world, still visible on every corner, fails to hide its superior ways.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“There was a part of Islam in every Arab Christian. Shibil agreed. Whatever their beliefs, they acknowledged sharing a culture that bridged faiths, joined by a common notion of custom and tradition and all that it entailed—honor, hospitality, shame, pride, dignity, and a respect for God’s power. For many Muslims and Christians there was even a common origin, a fabled beginning in faraway Yemen. “If you cut me, you see Lebanon,” Hikmat said, somewhat dramatically. “You see the Prophet Mohammed, you see Imam Ali, you see the cedars.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“I was raised with an innocence at odds with the experience of my pragmatic Arab ancestors. To be born in these parts is not only to know loss and rumination, but also to savor the endless pleasures of discord.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“The Middle East that had fascinated, preoccupied, and saddened me for decades was gone.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“Your first discovery when you travel,” wrote Elizabeth Hardwick, “is that you do not exist.” In other words, it is not just the others who have been left behind; it is all of you that is known. Gone is the power or punishment of your family name, the hard-earned reputations of forebears, no”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“longer familiar to anyone, not in this new place. Gone are those who understand how you became yourself. Gone are the reasons lurking in the past that might excuse your mistakes. Gone is everything beyond your name on the day of your arrival, and even that may ultimately be surrendered.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“hospitality, cosmopolitanism, and tolerance.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

“the sight of militiamen sipping coffee at Starbucks, their rocket-propelled grenades resting in chairs in a distinctly Lebanese vision of globalization.”
― Anthony Shadid, House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East