The True True Story of Raja the Gullible Quotes

“too would have felt awful had I been there. Why didn’t you ask me to come with you?” “What’s the point of both of us being miserable?” “You would feel better because you would have had to make me feel better.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“Now that I’m old and gullible, I hope for the greatest of all adventures: a night of unbroken sleep.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“end of the world was terrifically exciting. There was fighting outside, and we were all claustrophobically”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“A culture that serves and protects the perpetrators of crimes will always try to convince its victims that they will feel better if they forgive and move on.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“When I was young and gullible”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“You would feel better because you would have had to make me feel better.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“A tale has many tails, and many heads, particularly if it’s true. Like life, it is a river with many branches, rivulets, creeks, and distributaries.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“You must be starching your shirts too much because it has seeped into your brain”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“I want to run a cheese grater down his repulsive face.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“I’d always wondered about Americans and their obsessions with the flag. Were they afraid someone might forget what country they were in? I might one day walk from the main house to the cottage”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“I wanted to be Japanese”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“I swam by myself”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“But he wouldn’t take a hint”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“I tried to be discreet earlier because I’d promised him then that I wouldn’t tell anyone. However”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“Hume once said avarice spurs industry. I can’t speak for the rest of the world”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“Now”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“You think working things out with him could be helpful for me, but that assumes I can deal with going over the hell I went through. I can barely manage my life as it is, and you think opening Pandora’s box is worth the risk because he will feel better? I should suffer over and over again to make him feel better and maybe after all my suffering, I might heal in time. You shouldn’t be defending him.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“I’d always wondered about Americans and their obsessions with the flag. Were they afraid someone might forget what country they were in?”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“I certainly was terrified as a child, like many gay boys of my generation. Somewhere around the age of five or six, I instinctively understood that adults no longer found my effeminacy endearing. What was once cute abruptly and without warning became despicable.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel

“I was twenty years old in 1980 when the Panamanian boxer cried no más and the fans and media were so offended at his quitting the fight. I knew nothing about boxing, then or now, but I remembered thinking at the time that if someone was raining blows on me, I too would want the world to stop, to stop rotating and give me some time to catch my breath. Forty years later, on the hood of a Mercedes weighed down by a chunk of concrete on its roof, I was whispering no más, no más, no más.”
― Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother): A Novel