An Unnecessary Woman Quotes

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Memory chooses to preserve what desire cannot hope to sustain.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden.She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“There is none more conformist than one who flaunts his individuality.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Most of us believe we are who we are because of the decisions we've made, because of events that shaped us, because of the choices of those around us. 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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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. It is the world outside that box that gives me trouble. I have adapted tamely, though not conventionally, to this visible world so I can retreat without much inconvenience into my inner world of books.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book. I try to be involved.
I am Raskalnikov. I am K. I am Humbert and Lolita.
I am you.
If you read these pages and think I'm the way I am because I lived through a civil war, you can't feel my pain. If you believe you're not like me because one woman, and only one, Hannah, chose to be my friend, then you're unable to empathize.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“I slipped into art to escape life. I sneaked off into literature.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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?”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“One reason we desire explanations is that they separate us and make us feel safe.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“To write is to know that you are not at home.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Anyone who says the pen is mightier than the sword has never come face-to-face with a gun.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“My patience, like my time in this world, grows shorter.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Literature gives me life, and life kills me. Well, life kills everyone.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“No nostalgia is felt as keenly as nostalgia for things that never existed.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“I know. You think you love art because you have a sensitive soul.

Isn't a sensitive soul simply a means of transforming a deficiency into proud disdain?

You think art has meaning. You think you're not like me.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Transmuting this sandy metaphor, if literature is my sandbox, then the real world is my hourglass—an hourglass that drains grain by grain.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Noah, however, was a son of a bitch of a captain who ran a very tight ship. Only pairs of the best and the brightest were allowed to climb the plank—perpetuate the species, repopulate the planet, and all that Nazi nonsense. Would Noah have allowed a lesbian zebra aboard, an unmarried hedgehog, a limping lemur?”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“In Czech, according to Milan Kundera, litost is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“...I try to live without interfering in the lives of others because I have no wish for them to interfere in mine.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“I consider it a shame that most contemporary American writing seems informed more by Hemingway, the hero of adolescent boys of all ages and genders, than by the sui generis genius of letters, Faulkner. A phalanx of books about boredom in the Midwest is lauded (where the Midwest lies is a source of constant puzzlement to me, somewhere near Iowa, I presume), as are books about unexplored angst in New Jersey or couples unable to communicate in Connecticut. It was Camus who asserted that American novelists are the only ones who think they need not be intellectuals.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“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.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“He may be my half brother, but we're not related. A chasm of incommunicable worlds lies between us.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman