Quotes from Rabih Alameddine

I realised when it came to men, I did not pick the beautiful or the correct. I picked the wrong one.

There are a few places on the East Coast, and maybe Los Angeles, where women understand evening gowns. The rest of the country still has far to go.

I don't hesitate when buying green bananas, but I'm slowing down.

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 Raskolnikov. 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. Like the bullet, I too stray. Forgive me.

My half brothers, like so many men and boys, have the impatience of the entitled.

Laura answered the door. She tried to smile welcome. Not an easy task. Eyes puffed, skin pallid, shirt stained. Taking care of her brother was draining the life out of her. Succubus in action.

If I tell the truth—and I should, shouldn't I?—I translate books with my invented system because it makes time flow more gently. That's the primary reason, I think. As Camus said in The Fall: "Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Some days are not new book days.

Of course I received various permutations of the "Who will want to marry you if you read so much?" lecture, but I also had to endure the chilly "Don't try to be so different from normal people." Different from normal people? When I first heard that, I was sorely offended. 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?

When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour, which was really a good thing because any kind of noise would make the soufflé drop, and there is nothing worse than a flaccid soufflé, is there, Jezebel darling? Fallen! Fallen is the great soufflé! Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail and the fallen soufflé.

She disappears after she's fed dinner, to who knows where, and returns sometime after the sun rises, but that's an approximate schedule. She's a Mediterranean cat, after all.

Nicio pierdere nu se simte mai acut decat pierderea a ceea ce ar fi putut sa fie. Nicio nostalgie nu doare la fel de mult ca nostalgia dupa lucrurile care n-au existat niciodata.

Literature gives me life and life kills me.

Restricting choices is not always a bad thing.

The ticktock of the tiny object full of gears suffocating all existence, wringing life out of life.

My half brothers, like so many men and boys, have the impatience of the entitled. (Aaliya)

In esenta, majoritatea antagonismelor sunt similaritati ireconciliabile. S-au purtat razboaie de o suta de ani pentru a se stabili daca Isus era om in forma divina sau divinitate sub forma umana. Credintele sunt ucigase.

Memory is a wound, you said. And some things are released only by the act of writing. Unless I go in with my scalpel and suction to excavate, to clean, to bring into light, that wound festers, and the gangrene of decay will eat me alive.

I'll admit that I'm not fond of children. They stick to you like burrs, and tearing them off is cumbersome. I don't dislike them. I simply prefer them not to be around.

I'd read through the whole thing twice, and I used to go on and on: Marcel, the spectacular writer, my idol, and so forth. I used to blather endlessly about why I adored him, how he, the desperate socialite and party hopper, the inveterate pleaser, was actually the outsider par excellence, how he could be amid all the people he'd always dreamed of befriending yet remain alone in the universe, the loneliest speck of all.

When things turn out as you expect more often than not, do you feel more in control of your destiny? Do you take more responsibility for your life? If that's the case, why do Americans always behave as if they're victims? Hear

I have reached the age where life has become a series of accepted defeats—age and defeat, blood brothers faithful to the end.

Home is never where she is, but where she is not.