Out of Place Quotes

“Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“و ما إن تنتقل أمي إلى الانجليزية حتى تصير نبرتها أكثر موضوعية وجدية فتكاد تطرد نهائيا الحميمية المتسامحة والمتموسقة للغتها الأولى، العربية

ص 26”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“There was always something wrong with how I was invented and meant to fit in with the world...Whether this was because I constantly misread my part or because of some deep flaw in my being I could not tell for most of my early life".”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“Being myself meant not only never being quite right, but also never feeling at ease, always expecting to be interrupted or corrected, to have my privacy invaded and my unsure person set upon.”
― Edward Said, Out of Place

“تخترع جميع العائلات آباءها و أبناءها و تمنح كل واحد منهم قصة و شخصية و مصيراً , بل إنها تمنحه لغته الخاصة .”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“وكان تجلبده بالجلد المغربي الأحمر والورق الرقيق المعرق الذي طبع عليه الكتاب يجسدان بالنسبة إلي كل ما هو فخم ومثير في أي كتاب”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“كنت أرى إقامتي المقدسية سارة. لكن يعذبني فيها أنها طليقة ومؤقتة، بل زائلة. وقد تبين لاحقا أنها فعلا كذلك

ص 47”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“it is geography—especially in the displaced form of departures, arrivals, farewells, exile, nostalgia, homesickness, belonging, and travel itself—that is at the core of my memories of those early years.”
― Edward Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“هكذا أمسيت جانحا، أنا إدوارد مرتكب المخالفات التي تستحق العقاب من خمول وتسكع والذي يتوقع دائما أن يقبض عليه متلبسا بفعل محضور يستدعي الاحتجاز بعد الدروس أو، بعد ذلك حين كبرت صفعة قوية من المعلم. وقد منحتني إعدادية الجزيرة اختباري الأول لنظام محكم أنشأه البريطانيون كمهمة كولونيالية. كان الجو جو طاعة عمياء يؤطرها إذعان بغيض عند المعلمين والتلامذة على حد السواء. ولم تكن المدرسة مثيرة بما هي مكان للعلم لكنها زودتني بأول اتصال مديد مع السلطة الكولونيالية من خلال الانجليزية القحة لأساتذتها وللعديد من التلاميذ”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“أرى إلى نفسي كتلة من التيارات المتدفقة. أؤثر هذه الفكرة عن نفسي على فكرة الذات الصلدة، وهى الهوية التى يعلق عليها الكثيرون أهمية كبيرة. تتدفق تلك التيارات، مثلها مثل موضوعات حياتي، خلال ساعات اليقظة. وهي، عندما تكون في أفضل حالاتها، لا تستدعى التصالح ولا التناغم. إنها من قبيل "النشاز"، وقد تكون فى غير مكانها، ولكنها على الأقل فى حراك دائم فى الزمان وفى المكان وبما هي أنواع مختلفة من المركبات الغريبة، لا تتحرك بالضرورة إلى أمام، وإنما قد يتحرك أحياناً واحدها ضد الآخر، على نحو طباقي ولكن من غير ما محور مركزي. إنه ضرب من ضروب الحرية، على ما يحلو لى أن أعتقد، على الرغم من أني بعيد كل البعد عن أن أكون مقتنعاً كلياً بذلك. ونزعة التشكيك هذه هى أحد الثوابت التي أتشبث بها بنوع خاص. والواقع أني تعلمت، وحياتي مليئة إلى هذا الحد بتنافر الأصوات، أن أؤثر إلا أكون سويا تماما وأنا أظل فى غير مكانى.”
― إدوارد سعيد, Out of Place

“ALL FAMILIES INVENT THEIR PARENTS AND CHILDREN, GIVE each of them a story, character, fate, and even a language.”
― Edward Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“Yet what I discovered much later about Khalil Beidas was that far from just being an Arabic teacher, he had been educated first in Jerusalem’s Russian Colony School (al-Mascowbia, now an Israeli interrogation and detention center mainly for Palestinians), then in Russia itself as a ward of the Russian Orthodox church there. When he returned to Palestine early in the century he became a participant in the literary nadwa, or ongoing seminar, held in Nazareth at its al-Mascowbia, now that town’s Israeli police station. When he returned to Jerusalem, full of ideas from the nineteenth-century Russian Christian cultural nationalists, from Dostoyevsky to Berdayev, he began to achieve recognition and even fame as a novelist and literary critic. During the twenties and thirties, he contributed to the construction of a Palestinian national identity, particularly in its encounter with the incoming Zionist settlers.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“He was Khalil Beidas, my father’s cousin, and the senior Arabic teacher at St. George’s; I never saw him at school, however, and did not know about his professional connection to it until four decades later, when my cousin Yousif told me that Beidas had been his Arabic instructor. The other fact that I later acquired about Beidas was that he was the father of Yousif Beidas, a man who had once worked for the Palestine Educational Company, had been my father’s best man, and after a short stint in the Arab Bank had come to Beirut as a refugee and in a matter of ten years or so had become Lebanon’s premier tycoon. He was the owner of the Intra Bank, which had enormous holdings in airlines, shipyards, commercial properties (including a building in Rockefeller Center), who exercised a powerful influence in Lebanon until he was ruined, and Intra collapsed in 1966. He died of cancer a few years later in Lucerne, destitute,”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“I lurked about the school with a growing sense of discomfort, rebelliousness, drift, and loneliness.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“To be looked at directly, and to return the gaze, was most difficult for me.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“This was Mr. Pilley, known to me in writing as “Hon. Sec’y” of the club, and also as the father of Ralph, a GPS contemporary of mine. “What are you doing here, boy?” he challenged me in a cold, reedy voice. “Going home,” I said, trying to be calm as he dismounted from the bicycle and walked toward me. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to be here?” he asked reprovingly. I started to say something about being a member, but he cut me off pitilessly. “Don’t answer back, boy. Just get out, and do it quickly. Arabs aren’t allowed here, and you’re an Arab!” If I hadn’t thought of myself as an Arab before, I now directly grasped the significance of the designation as truly disabling. When I told my father what Mr. Pilley had said to me he was only mildly disquieted. “And he wouldn’t believe that we were members,” I pleaded. “I’ll speak to Pilley about this,” was the noncommittal answer. The subject was never discussed again: Pilley had gotten away with it.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“Sitting in the plush cinema seats, much more than in viewing the Hollywood films themselves—which struck me as a weird form of science fiction corresponding to nothing at all in my life—I luxuriated in the sanctioned freedom to see and not be seen.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“It still impresses me that he stuck to the story in its few episodes and details for the thirty-six years he was my father until his death in 1971, and that he was so successful in keeping at bay all the other either forgotten or denied aspects of his story. Not until twenty years after his death did it occur to me that he and I were almost exactly the same age when we, precisely forty years apart, came to the United States, he to make his life, I to be directed by his script for me, until I broke away and started trying to live and write my own.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“She had developed an extraordinary capacity to draw one in, convincing you of her total commitment and then, with scarcely a moment's notice, making you realize that she had judged and found you wanting.”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place