Rabih Alameddine famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

The eye always fills in the imperfections.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Eye #Perfection #Imperfection
I wonder whether there is such a thing as a sense of individuality. Is it all a facade, covering a deep need to belong? Are we simply pack animals desperately trying to pretend we are not?
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Animal #Individuality #Trying
I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Believe #I Believe #Oneself
Me? I was lost for long time. I didnâ€™t make any friends for few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school [â€¦]. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. [â€¦]. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#School #Boys #Years
...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Perspective #Perception #Stories
I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Mean #Reality #Chaos
By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across--each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip--is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Coffee #Book #Hot
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 only for a moment, a moment before one immures oneself again.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Art #Sex #Wall
What is the purpose of a city if not to grant the greatest of gifts, anonymity?
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Cities #Purpose #Grants
By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Country #Distance #Writing
Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they donâ€™t bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they donâ€™t rattle your windows and nerves with indiscriminate sonic booms just because they can?
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Needs #Nerves #Bombs
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

#Play #Long #Lust
How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Who I Am #People #World
I opened myself to you only to be skinned alive. The more vulnerable I became, the faster and more deft your knife. Knowing what was happening, still I stayed and let you carve more. That's how much I loved you. That's how much.
-- Rabih Alameddine

#Love #Dream #Knives
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

#Two #Vanity #People

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